Istina u fikciji
Truth in fiction

Summary/Abstract: It would be nice if we could take [...] descriptions of fictional characters at their face value, ascribing to them the same subject-predicate form as parallel descriptions of real-life characters. Then the sentences “Holmes wears a silk top hat” and “Nixon wears a silk top hat” would both be false because the referent of the subject term – fictional Holmes or real-life Nixon, as the case may be – lacks the property, expressed by the predicate, of wearing a silk top hat. The only difference would be that the subject terms “Holmes” and “Nixon” have referents of radically different sorts: one a fictional character,the other a real-life person of flesh and blood. Storytelling is pretence. The storyteller purports to be telling the truth about matters whereof he has knowledge. Let us not take our descriptions of fictional characters at face value, but instead let us regard them as abbreviations for longer sentences beginning with an operator “In such-and-such fiction. ...”

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