You Cannot Steal Something that Doesn't Exist: Against Fictionalism about Fiction

Abstract

Realists about fictional characters accept an ontological commitment to fictional characters, which enables them to provide straightforward explanations of data that are difficult to explain absent this commitment. Fictionalists about fictional characters purport to appropriate realists’ explanatory power without their ontological commitments by paraphrasing the realist's claims (‘according to the realist, …’). However, this approach faces a critical hurdle: To claim the explanatory benefits the fictionalist paraphrase cannot (radically) change the content of the realist theory. But realism's explanatory power comes, in part, from an associated theory of how the relevant claims should be interpreted, and that metatheory is itself ontologically committing. Fictionalists must accordingly offer alternative interpretations of the paraphrased claims, jettisoning any advantage they may claim over other anti-realist views.