Acquaintance with a fictional object: semantic conditions and pragmatic rules

Abstract

In this article, I try to consider the most general semantic and pragmatic conditions for the meaningfulness of using in the natural language empty terms de re. To do this, I touch upon the relationship of the universe of possible worlds with the most general ideas about objects, consider the semantic and pragmatic conditions for acquaintance with a fictional object, and draw on the analysis of statements about fictional objects. I come to the following conclusions. First, for the interpretation of fictitious names used in the mode of the imaginative de re, structures of possible worlds formed by chronologically ordered sequences of worlds (stories) are convenient, among which the so-called Leibniz stories correspond to some "naive" theory of the object. It ensures the reducibility or irreducibility of stories to each other, as well as the distribution of objects among stories that are, to varying degrees, distant from the actualized world. This allows you to define different kinds of stories. Secondly, the semantics of the term in imaginative de re must operate with the agent's psychological states, in particular, non-cognitive ones. They are designed to certify the transparency of history and the world in order to get to know a fictional object in it. Such states, however, play the role of external data. This allows us to describe the following pragmatic rules of the use of terms in the mode of imaginative de re: imaginative clarity, transparency, and retention of agency. Thirdly, singular terms and, in some situations, index expressions, depending on the context, can be used de re to designate both a referent in the actual world and a specific sign object called transparentia. This actual world object is the token of a fictional object in the alternate history world. Its communicative significance lies in the possibility of describing the discourse of the unfolding of such a story. The pragmatic obligations of the speaker are preserved here too: the object given by the transparency must be located on this side of the transparency threshold.