FREDERICK KROON

Make- Believe and Fictional Reference

In this paper I describe a certain quite general problem for the view that an appeal to makebelieve or pretense allows us to make room for the truth of sentences containing fictional terms without thereby buying into a realm of entities to serve as the referents of those terms, a realm of reified fictions. My target will be the kind of general pretense-based account of fiction (what I shall loosely call the make-believe program) defended in one way or another by Kendall Walton, Gareth Evans, and Greg Currie, among otbers.! My suggestion in response to the problem is that it is serious enough to warrant a radical rethinking of at least aspects of the make-believe program; serious enough, in fact, for us to consider an extreme reifying view like David Lewis's realist counterpart theory which on its own terms provides a natural solution to the problem.?

The real-fictional problem, as I shall call it, arises from a phenomenon that is endemic to fiction: the use of real proper names in fiction. Fictional works not only use invented names like "Sherlock Holmes"; they also import the use of proper names like "Baker Street" and "London" that are standardly used to refer to real entities, and they use such real proper names in sentences that combine the two kinds:

(1) Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street in London.

Supporters of the make-believe program claim that neither on the story's use of such a sentence nor on its use by readers of the. work does the sentence express a standard proposition, the sort of proposition expressed by usual nonconniving uses of sentences of the same form as (1) (for example, "David Lewis lives on Prospect Avenue in Princeton"). For Walton and

'Evans, there is only the pretense that a proposition is being expressed: there literally is no proposition since there literally is no Sherlock Holmes. (Here they buy into a direct reference view of the semantic role of proper names, including the fictional name "Sherlock Holmes. ")3 For Currie, on the other hand, a proposition is being expressed when author or reader utters (1), but the proposition is not of a kind standardly expressed by sentences of the same form as (1). Genuine proper names are directly referential, while a fictional name like "Sherlock Holmes" functions either as a bound variable or as a disguised description that encapsulates in Ramseyfied form the' content of the storyr' in either case, (1) expresses a general rather than a singular proposition.

But while adherents of the make-believe view agree that (1) does not express a standard proposition, they don't deny that there is expression of a standard proposition in the case of sentences occurring in fictional contexts but containing only real proper names; for example:

(2) Baker Street is in London.

For they hold something like the following principle about the occurrence of real proper names in fictional contexts+

(R) Occurrences in fictional contexts of real proper names like "London," "Baker/Street," "Napoleon," and so on, are purely referential and take their usual reference,

and if (R) is right, it follows straightforwardly that a sentence like (2) expresses a standard proposition (given that all the other parts of the sentence make their usual propositional contribution).

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The make-believe program, however, harbors a contradiction if taken in conjunction with (R), with different versions of the program encountering the contradiction at different points. Consider first the case of transfictive contexts, contexts combining fictional terms from different fictional works, and Walton's treatment of such contexts. Consider, for example, a sentence like:

(3) Holmes is much cleverer than Poirot.

According to Walton, (3) is true to the extent that it is fictional that Holmes is much cleverer than Poirot in an unofficial game of makebelieve in which the Holmes stories and the Agatha Christie "Poirot" stories combine to serve as props. On this account (3) once again does not express a standard (singular) proposition, since there is no proposition to be expressed: there is only the pretense at expression of a standard proposition. (Other adherents of the make-believe view, such as Currie and Levinson, prefer a different approach, one that interprets "Holmes" and "Poirot" in (3) as names for abstract fictional roless Put such views aside for the moment.)

The real-fictional problem arises in the case of transfictive contexts that use real proper names supposedly governed by (R). Consider a Frenchman, Pierre, who has read an idealistic novel in French about London (Je desire Londres) that represents London as being far prettier and more sedate than it really is or than it is depicted to be in the Holmes stories: no slumareas or Chinese opium dens, for example. After reading the Holmes novels, Pierre exclaims:

(4) Londres est plus jolie que London.

Since "Londres" and "London" are both real proper names, it follows from (R) that Pierre's use of (4) must express a standard proposition, a proposition that on one level Pierre only pretends to assert since it is asserted in the context of an unofficial game of make-believe, but which is at the same time true to the extent that in uttering (4) Pierre is actually asserting that so to pretend in the game is fictionally to speak truly? Now comes the problem: unfortunately, the proposition which (4) is alleged to express is necessarily false, since by (R) "London"

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refers to London while "Londres" also refers to London; but Pierre is scarcely likely to pretend that a simple contradiction is true, and it is scarcely coherent to suppose that so to pretend is then also to say something true.s (If you think that the example misses the fact that Conan Doyle was writing at a different time, was, in short, writing about the London of the late 1800s, just suppose that Pierre utters (4) at the time that Conan Doyle was writing.)

Now it might be thought that there is nothing odd about regarding (4) as expressing a contradiction, since it should be agreed on all hands that contradictions are sometimes true in fietional works. Thus there is nothing odd or surprising about a fictional work in which someone squares the circle. There is a crucial difference between this latter example and the "London" case, however: (4) seems to harbor no contradiction at all, despite the fact that (R) allowed us to derive one. (4) simply reports the result of Pierre's putting together what he knows about the London of Je desire Londres and what he knows about the London of the Holmes stories. Even Pierre need be in no doubt that the Holmes stories are based in the city he calls "Londres," and he might in fact be using the two different names "Londres" and "London" precisely to remove the air of contradiction there would otherwise be in his uttering (4).

Indeed, there is a more familiar way of doing this, a way we have just used ourselves. Speak- . ing in English, Pierre might instead have said something like:

(5) The London of Je desire Londres is much prettier than the London of the Holmes stories.

It is hard to see how (5) can change anything for Walton, however. (5) still uses real proper names, which presumably are still governed by (R). (5) just raises a new problem: how to understand the use of qualifiers like "of Je desire Londres" and "of the Holmes stories" (or "as it is in Je desire Londres / the Holmes stories"), and how to understand the proposition expressed by (5), if there indeed is one.

It might be thought that Walton has a ready solution to this version of the real-fictional problem, for he has alternative paraphrases of what is asserted in transfictive contexts. Walton's standard kind of paraphrase of a sentence like:

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Kroon Make-Believe and Fictional Reference

(6) Napoleon was more pompous than Caesar,

is;

(6') Julius Caesar and War and Peace are such that to pretend to assert that Napoleon is more pompous than Caesar, in a game of such and such a sort, is fictionally to speak truly;

But he also offers the following alternative kind of paraphrase:

(6") There is a degree of pompousness p and a degree of pompousness q such that p > q and it is fictional in War and Peace that Napoleon is pompous to degree p, and it is fictional in Julius Caesar that Caesar is pompous to degree q.?

Mimicking the latter, we might represent what is asserted in (5) as follows:

(5') There are degrees of prettiness p and q, where p > q, such that it is fictional in Je desire Londres that London is pretty to degree p and it is fictional in the Sherlock Holmes stories that London is pretty to degree q.

On this view, someone who utters (5) is not commenting on his or her engagement in an unofficial game of make-believe based on the two works, but drawing a comparison between what is fictional in the works. Call this the relational cross-fiction account of what is asserted. -

The account faces a number of problems, some obvious, some not so obvious. In the first place, there is surely something distinctly unsatisfactory about a solution that sees two possibilities of paraphrase in the case of a sentence like (2) and (6) but-on pain of contradiction-only one in the case of (4) and (5) (namely the relational cross-fiction kind of paraphrase and not the standard kind). As far as logical form is concerned, all four look entirely alike: all have the appearance of relational sentences of the form "aRb," so one would certainly expect a common treatment of their possibilities of paraphrase. Walton himself clearly thinks that it is only the intentions of the speaker that sometimes rules out one paraphrase but not the other, and makes no room for the thought that logic might perversely rule out certain unofficial games of make-believe.

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In addition, it is disappointing that the relational cross-fiction account doesn't extend very _ easily to mixed contexts that do suggest a more straightforward appeal to pretense. Thus consider:

(7) The London of Je desire Londres is much prettier than the London of the Holmes stories, for unlike the former, the latter contains some depressingly derelict areas, areas Holmes himself sometimes visited.

Such a context cries out for the more standard kind of paraphrase, since the last clause is noncomparative and from Walton's point of view seems best understood in terms of the speaker's engagement in a game of make-believe based in part on the Holmes stories. (More generally, contexts like (5) and (7) show that a phrase like "the London of Je desire Londres" behaves syntactically like a substantival phrase. Walton's appeal to a relational cross-fiction account makes this mystifying; if the relational crossfiction account is authoritative, we would expect to find a sentential operator of some kind and not something that looks and behaves like a name-qualifier. )

Most important of all, however, is the fact that the solution is not nearly general enough. There are other real-fictional problems waiting in the wings.

Consider a sentence like:

(8) Smith admires Sherlock Holmes.

According to Walton, and in slightly modified form to Currie, (8) is true to the extent that in a game of make-believe Smith plays with the Holmes stories as prop, Smith finds himself admiring Sherlock Holmes. Once again, there is no expression of a standard proposition: for Walton there is no proposition to be expressed, since there is no Sherlock Holmes, while for Currie the proposition expressed is not a standard singular proposition, since the name "Holmes" is really a disguised description. But the same cannot be said of:

(9) Smith admires Garrison,

said, let us suppose, on the basis of Smith's watching the Oliver Stone movie JFK, which presents a fictionalized account of the (late)

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Jim Garrison's attempt to find out who really killed Kennedy. Applied to this example, (R) implies that (9) expresses a standard proposition, a proposition that the utterer of (9) presumably pretends to assert in the context of his continuation of the game of make-believe played by Smith in watching the movie. And (9) will be true to the extent it is true or fictional in this game of make-believe that Smith admires the person called "Garrison" whose activities he watches. Assume that (9) is true in this sense.

The real-fictional problem for this case arises as follows. Suppose that Smith is Jim Garrison himself, and that Smith/Garrison fmds himself strongly admiring his alter-ego on the basis of watching the movie JFK. Clearly Garrison might admire his movie alter-ego even if he hates himself in real life and even if he is portrayed in the movie as totally above selfadmiration. Yet by (R), (9) expresses the proposition that Garrison admires Garrison, and the pretense account holds, broadly speaking, that it is fictional or make-believe that this proposition is true.10 The problem is how to make logical space for the make-believe truth that Garrison admires Garrison, given the possibility that in the story portrayed it is false that Garrison admires himself. Indeed, (9) might be (makebelieve) true precisely because in the movie Garrison remains utterly humble, a quality the real Garrison lacks but wishes he had. But how can we make sense of a game of make-believe in which Garrison admires Garrison precisely because Garrison is humble and doesn't admire himself? Like Walton's initial account of (4), that imputes a contradiction which simply isn't there: there is nothing even remotely odd about Garrison's admiring-as we might put it-the Garrison of the movie on the grounds that the latter doesn't admire himself. But note that this time it is not only the standard paraphrase that fails as an account of what the speaker is asserting. Even if the relational cross-fiction account of sentences like (5) can be saved, it looks utterly powerless to help us in the present case.

It might be thought that this is an example of a de re attitude that is not yet a de se attitude, as in the case of someone who sees himself in the mirror and believes "His pants are on fire" without (yet) believing "My pants are on fire. " Thus we might say that in the context of Garrison's game of make-believe he admires Garri-

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son (de re) without admiring himself (i.e., de se). But this can't be right. For on the de re versus de se attitude model, there should be room for the agent to find out that he is the party in question, just as the agent with his pants on fire might suddenly realize that the pants on fire are his. There is no scope for any such discovery in the case of Garrison, however. He is bound to realize that he is the subject of the movie, and as we saw above might even bring this knowledge to bear on his attitudes to the Garrison of the movie. None of this means that in the context of his game of make-believe he ends up admiring himself: there is a gulf between Garrison and the Garrison of the movie that precludes this. In short, the de re versus de se attitude contrast is unable to shed light on the truth of (9).11

Note once again that we have on hand a natural way to express the sense in which (9) is true, namely by using a special qualifier of the form " ... as he is in work W" or "the ... of work W" {the kind of qualifier that also featured in (5». Thus in place of (9) we might say:

(10) Smith [that is, Garrison] admires Garrison as he is in the movie.

But once again this. just compounds the problem, for how are we to understand such a qualifier and how does it interact with principle (R)?

Enough has been said to show why the realfictional problem is a problem for the makebelieve view of fiction. Enough too, 1 suspect, to show why a strong Lewis-type version of modal realism might reasonably be invoked as a solution to the problem. (I shall here put to one side straightforwardly Meinongiansolutions, usually thought to be rather more beyond the pale because of their commitment to incomplete and impossible objects.) According to a Lewistype version of modal realism, there are other possible worlds and other possible individuals occupying these worlds, individuals that resemble the individuals in the actual world to a greater or lesser degree but are not strictly identical to them. The modal realist solution to the real-fictional problem is simplicity itself. In sentence (4), for instance, the name "London" refers not to London but to a fictional counterpart of London located in a possible world in

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Kroon Make-Believe and: Fictional Reference

which the Holmes stories are told as fact. This counterpart exists without being actual, and resembles the actual London-or at least the London of the late 1800s-to a large degree. Such a view finds confirmation when we consider (5). The modal.realist view allows us to make sense of the natural tendency to use qualifiers like "of the Holmes stories" or "as he was in the movie" when drawing such comparisons as (5) or attributing attitudes such as (10). On the modal realist view these serve to indicate that there is reference to otherworldly counterparts of London or Garrison, worlds in which the stories are told as fact.

In fact, on this view they function in much the same way as a certain familiar kind of temporal qualifier. For not only do we say things like (5), we also say things like:

(11) The London of 1992 is much prettier than the London of 1892.

Now there is the temptation to understand the semantics of a sentence like (11) somewhat as follows:

(11') There are degrees of prettiness p and q such that London is pretty to degree p in 1992 and London is pretty. to degree q in 1892 and p >q.

But as with the Walton-style relational crossfiction paraphrase (5') of (5), however, such a strategy has problems with analogous attitudinal sentences such as:

(12) Smith admires the Nixon of 1992,

which resist coherent reduction to a cross-time relation of admiration. For what could it possibly mean to say that Smith now admires Nixon in 1992?

It is tempting, therefore, to appeal to a different sort of account, one that clearly appeals to a lot of philosophers for other broadly metaphysical reasons: a temporal parts account according to which (11) makes reference to temporal parts or segments of London, with the qualifiers "of 1992" and "of 1892" standing for functions that take individuals to their relevant temporal parts, and which sees (12) as similarly making reference to a temporal part of Nixon. Given the

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evident syntactic analogy between (5) and (11), and between (10) and (12), it surely becomes tempting to offer broadly the same kind of semantic account of the two sentences, and that is precisely what the modal realist solution to the real-fictional problem does: it offers fictional counterparts of actual individuals as opposed to temporal segments of individuals.P

(More simply, if there are-as the believer in temporal parts presumably agrees-comparative and relational facts of this kind about temporal parts, then why not regard (11) and (12) as reporting these facts? Similarly, if there areas the modal realist agrees-comparative and relational facts of this kind about fictional counterparts, then why not regard (5) and (10) as reporting these facts?)

So much for the solution. Before concluding, let me briefly respond to one objection to the solution. The objection is that the temporal case and the fiction case are disanalogous in at least one important way, a way that shows that the counterpart solution cannot work. While there is just one temporal segment Nixon-in- 1992 (putting aside the issue of vagueness), there are numerous JFK counterparts of Garrison and numerous Sherlock Holmes counterparts of London, each one differing in some respect from the others but all having the properties they are implicitly or explicitly credited with in the movie or stories. Which of these many fictional counterparts of Garrison does Garrison admire? Which of these Holmes counterparts of London is the subject of the true comparison "The London of Je desire Londres is much prettier than the London of the Holmes stories"?13

There is surely not much of a problem here for the counterpart theorist. For following a suggestion of Currie.l+ we should say that the fictional counterparts of Garrison are not just counterparts of Garrison: they are also counterparts of each other. They count as counterparts by acquaintance for us, the community of people who watch the movie, to the extent that in all worlds in which the events of JFK are communicated to us as known fact, or are somehow witnessed by us, the fictional Garrisons are alike in the way we learn about them and their doings, are alike in the way we are acquainted with them.t5 In short, for the counterpart theorist, the various fictional Garrison counterparts

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of the real Garrison are close enough to being identical, close enough to warrant talk of the Garrison of the movie.

Still, they are strictly a plurality. But so what? So long as Garrison admires all, or at least all his closest, counterparts.w surely that is all we need insist on for truth; and so long as all, or the closest, Je desire Londres counterparts of London are prettier than the Sherlock Holmes counterparts of London, that.is all we need for truth. Counterpart theory seems to have no further trouble with such contexts.

I began this paper by saying that the realfictional problem is a problem for a view that refuses to posit a realm of fictional entities as the referents of fictional terms, on at least some of their uses. So far, however, we have not interpreted the real-fictional problem as a problem for the case of genuine fictional names, but only for the case of real names occurring in fiction. But if modal realism is endorsed as a solution to the real-fictional problem, it will be difficult elsewhere to resist the modal realist view that fictional terms stand for non-actual but possible individuals located in worlds where their embedding works are told as fact. In particular, it will be difficult to resist it as an account of the behavior of fictional terms in transfictive contexts such as:

(3) Holmes is much cleverer than Poirot,

or in attitudinal contexts such as:

(8) Smith admires Sherlock Holmes.

For it will be odd to have one sort of accounta strongly objectualist one-for a sentence like (4) or (5) and a totally different, radically nonobjectualist account (Walton's pretense-account, for example) for (3); one kind of account for a sentence like (9) or (10) and a totally different one for (8). That would generate a schizophrenic semantics of a kind that no one wants. In short, on one promising solution to the real-fictional problem we quite generally need fictional entities as the referents of names used in the context of fiction. If supporters of the makebelieve program disagree with such a view, the onus is on them to provide an alternative solution to the real-fictional problem.

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Let me conclude with a final argument in favor of the solution and against an alternative reifying solution that might be suggested. The modal realist solution holds out for fictional entities of a Meinongianconcreteness: they are not abstract representations, for example. This conflicts with the views of quite a few philosophers who have recently argued for abstract entities of some kind as the referents of fictional terms in fictional contexts.'? But in the present context there are good reasons for preferring a modal realist view. To begin with, attitude ascriptions such as "Smith admires Holmes" tend to occur in wider contexts that also feature reasons for the attitude: thus "Smith admires

I

Holmes because he has great deductive powers."

But if Holmes is an abstract entity, then the words "he has great deductive powers" cannot be given the semantics one expects: in particular, "he" cannot refer to a man, but must be reinterpreted to show that it refers instead to an abstract entity; and similarly for the other words.I8 No such problem confronts the modal realist view.

Secondly.za sentence like:

(3) Holmes is much cleverer than Poirot

or:

(5) The London of Je desire Londres is much prettier than the London of the Holmes stories

looks for all the world like a straightforward comparison in respect of qualities. But that can't, of course, be true if terms like "Holmes" or "London as it is in the Holmes stories" refer to abstract entities. On the latter account, these terms must stand for something like roles that can be filled by various possible things, and the comparison is between the role-fillers rather than the roles. This must again play havoc with the attempt to give a systematic semantic account of slightly more complex contexts: we need only consider a sentence like:

(13) Smith fervently admires Holmes, since he is much cleverer than Poirot.

Once again, then, the modal realist view allows us to retain a literalness of interpretation that is simply impossible on the alternative abstract reifying view.I9

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Kroon Make-Believe and Fictional Reference

FREDERICK KROON Department of Philosophy University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland, New Zealand

INTERNET: F.KROON@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ

1. See Kendall Walton, "Pictures and Make-Believe," Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 283-319; "Fearing Fictions," Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978): 5-27; K. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: on the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Harvard University Press, 1990); "Precis of Mimesis as Make-Believe: on the Foundations of the Representational Arts," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 379-382; "Reply to Reviewers," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991): 413-427. See also Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 10. Greg Currie is another exponent of the make-believe program; see G. Currie, The Nature of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). David Lewis also accepts elements of such a view. See D. Lewis, "Truth in Fiction" (plus postscripts), in . Collected Papers, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

2. I don't mean to endorse the view, however; I only mean to suggest that the view at least offers the elements of a solution. In other work I hope to show how such a reifying solution can plausibly be avoided. Lewis himself is sympathetic to the solution (personal communication).

3. Evans, op. cit. Walton, Mimesis, p. 36 and passim.

4. Currie, The Nature of Fiction, chapter 4, cf. p. 181: "In fiction itself [fictional names] serve merely to introduce bound variables. When we speak about fiction they become disguised definite descriptions: expressions that have denotation in some worlds but not in others."

5. In Mimesis, for.example.Walton argues that the sentence, "Giants mosquitoes raised in the North Woods were used to drill wells in Arizona" (pp. 397 fA) must express the proposition it standardly expresses when it is uttered by someone recounting the Paul Bunyan stories, a proposition which its utterer pretends to assert in the course of playing his authorized game of make-believe with the Paul Bunyan stories (p. 401). And in the same vein Currie writes that:

the reader of the Sherlock Holmes stories is supposed to understaod that "London," as it occurs in the stories, refers to London .... The Holmes stories are about (among other things) London, not "the London of the Holmes stories," if that's supposed to be something other than London itself. (The Nature of Fiction, p. 5)

6. See Currie, The Nature of Fiction, pp. 171-180 and Jerry Levinson's review of Walton's Mimesis in "Making Believe: Review of Kendall Walton's Mimesis as MakeBelieve," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).

7. See Mimesis, pp. 398 ff.

8. Note that Currie's fictional role account is safe from this problem to the extent that it counts the name "London" in (4) as a name for a fictional role, so that transfictive

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contexts don't count as fictional contexts in the sense of (R). But such a view finds it hard to deal with mixed contexts such as: Sherlock Holmes is much cleverer than Hercule Poirot, for he solved the mystery of the Hound of the Baskervilles which would surely have stumped Poirot.

9. Mimesis, p. 413. Walton actually has: "There is a degree of pompousness such that it is fictional in War and Peace that Napoleon is pompous to that degree, and it is fictional in Julius Caesar that Caesar is not," but this is at best a paraphrase of "either Napoleon was more pompous than Caesar or Caesar was more pompous than Napoleon."

10. This is Walton's account. Currie holds that we can be in a kind of emotional state in virtue of make-believing and make-desiring rather than believing and desiring (The Nature of Fiction, chapter 5). As far as I can see, this faces exactly the same problems, although Currie disagrees (personal communication).

11. The example is Kaplan's. For a general discussion, see Lewis, "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se;" Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 513-543.

12. Lewis, of course, is as much a believer in temporal stages and parts as he is in other possible worlds and their non-actual denizens. See, for example, "Survival and Identity" (plus postscripts), in Collected Papers, vol. 1 (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 55-77. Lewis takes temporal stages to be more or less momentary, so that the items presently under discussion count as temporal parts or segments rather than stages, where segments are nonmaximal aggregates of stages. ce. also what he says about temporary intrinsics in On the Plurality o/Worlds (Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 202-205.

13. Concretist Meinongian theories-the ones postulating concrete non-existents-may be thought to escape this problem, since they allow incomplete entities. But as far as I know, Meinongian theories have generally balked at fictional objects of the kind presently under discussion. Thus Zalta (himself no concretist) briefly flirts with such a suggestion, and then puts it aside (Abstract Objects: An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983], p. 95).

14. See The Nature of Fiction, pp. 136 ff. Currie here adapts Lewis's solution to the problem of the identity of Macbeth's dagger in his "Individuation by Acquaintance and by Stipulation," Philosophical Review 92 (1983): 3-32. Presumably Garrison's fictional counterparts are also counterparts of each other by description, since to be a fictional counterpart of Garrison someone must not only fit the JFK depiction but must also be sufficiently like the real Garrison to count as a Garrison counterpart; but leave this aside: for reasons that become clear below, the counterpart theorist will want his account to work for thoroughly fictional entities like Sherlock Holmes as well.

15. Walton seems to hold that we make-believe witnessing these events, perhaps via a kind of photographic film of the events; Currie, on the other hand, holds that we makebelieve that the fictional author is presenting us with information he knows to be true (The Nature of Fiction, pp. 94- 95).

16. The closest counterparts are the ones that exist at the worlds closest to ours where JFK is communicated to us as known fact, or perhaps at the closest belief-worlds (cf. the complications affecting Lewis's discussion of truth in fiction in Lewis's "Truth in Fiction"); the qualification "clos-

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est" is added since it would be unrealistic to expect Garrison to admire all his counterparts, given their variety.

17. For example, Peter van Inwagen, "Creatures of Fiction," American Philosophical Quar:terly 14 (1977): 299- 308, and neo-Meinongians like Ed ZaIta (Abstract Objects:

An Introduction to Axiomatic Metaphysics [Dordrecht:

D. Reidel, 1983] and Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality [MIT Press, 1988]). Recall that Currie also prefers such a view in the case of transfictive contexts, although not elsewhere. Saul Kripke also argues for such a view in his unpublished John Locke Lectures of 1973,

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where he claims that abstract fictional entities are the objects of attitudes to fictions such as admiration (see Evans, The Varieties of Reference, p. 360).

18. See Hector-Neri Castaneda, "Fiction and Reality:

Their Fundamental Connections," Poetics 8 (1979): 31-62, especially pp. 41-42, for effective criticism of such "predicate ambiguity" views.

19. I would like to thank Greg Currie, Stephen Davies, David Lewis, and Denis Robinson for their useful comments on aspects of my argument.

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