Volume 99, Issue 4 pp. 596-611
Original Article

Are Fictional Characters and Literary Works Ontologically on a Par?

Ioan-Radu Motoarcă

Corresponding Author

Ioan-Radu Motoarcă

Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago

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First published: 09 December 2016
Citations: 1

Abstract

This article is a reaction to the following argument that has been offered in favor of abstract realism about fictional characters: fictional characters do not impose any extra ontological cost on our ontology, because they belong to the same ontological kind as literary works, which we already accept. I address arguments that have been adduced by Jeffrey Goodman in defense of this argument, and I show that there is no relevant parallelism between fictional entities and literary works that the abstract fictional realist can use to bolster her theory.

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