Logics of Fiction

A Pluralist Approach to the Problem Of Anaphora

Abstract

Sentences involving fictional proper names pose significant challenges for both Fregean and 
Russellian interpretations. In Frege’s case, a sentence like “Capitu is a fictional character” lacks a truth value, 
which contrasts with how such sentences are typically understood and used in ordinary language. For Russell, 
that same sentence would be false, which also fails to align with common linguistic usage. 
Another limitation of these approaches concerns cases of anaphora, in which a single occurrence of a fictional 
name appears to operate under different referential regimes within the same sentence — as in “Capitu is a woman from Rio de Janeiro, she is a fictional character created by Machado de Assis.” I argue that Recanati’s 
metaphysical solution, based on mental files, is excessively ad hoc and theoretically burdensome. 
In this article, I propose a pluralist approach within the domain of philosophical logic as applied to fiction. I 
argue that different non-classical logics — such as free logics, modal logics, and many-valued logics — can be 
mobilized in a coordinated way to interpret distinct types of fictional, metafictional, and parafictional 
sentences. I contend that, through procedures of translation between these logics and Classical Logic, it is 
possible to preserve the Principle of Anaphoric Coreference without resorting to metaphysical constructions. 
This approach allows for a formally consistent and metaphysically more parsimonious treatment of cases in 
which a single fictional name operates under multiple referential regimes.