Publication Date
2022
Faculty Department
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Certain realists about properties and relations identify them with universals. Furthermore, some hold that for a wide range of meaningful predicates, the semantic contribution to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which those predicates figure is the universal expressed by the predicate. I here address ontological issues raised by predicates first introduced to us via works of fiction and whether the universal realist should accept that any such predicates express universals. After discussing the lines of reasoning given by Braun (2015) and Sawyer (2015) for fictional universal anti-realism, I propose a novel, Kripke-inspired argument for the same. I ultimately argue that while such an argument presents the strongest case for fictional universal anti-realism, it is nonetheless unsound. I conclude that nothing stands in the way of accepting that some fictional predicates possibly refer, and hence, that some universals are fictional universals.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
“Fictional Universal Realism,” Metaphysica, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
