Publication Date
Spring 2026
Faculty Department
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Document Type
Article
Abstract
I here critically discuss “the Selection Problem”, a vexing problem for metaphysicians who are realists about fictional entities and who further claim that such entities are identified with nonactualia. The Selection Problem arises due to the fact that the nonactualist is forced to defend the view that ficta are somehow discovered, or selected, by authors who then present them to us so we may entertain their exploits. But how exactly does an author manage this when there are a vast number of eligible candidates to be found in the relevant nonactual realms? I argue that the realist who is also a nonactualist would do well to adopt an ontology on which ficta are metaphysically vague in the sense that they are not wholly found at any particular nonactual realm, but are at once spread out over them all.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
10.1093/pq/pqag019
