Abstract

Fictional characters do not really exist. Names of fictional characters refer, to fictional characters. We should divorce the idea of reference from that of existence (the picture of the name as a tag has limited applications; the Predicate Calculus, with its existential quantifier, does not adequately reflect the relevant concepts in natural language; and model theory, with its domains, might also have been misleading). Many puzzle-cases are resolved this way (among other things, there is no problem assigning negative existential statements the appropriate truth values). And fictional characters, although not existing, have real powers through their representations, which are real.