Description

Eduarda Calado Barbosa (FAPESP; IIF/SADAF/CONICET)—based on joint work with Iago Batistela. Another take on the co-predication problem: a critical referentialist approach

June 20, 15:00

Venue: Batzar Aretoa (HEFA I)

Abstract: 

In this work, we discuss possible treatments of metafictional and mixed uses of proper names within the Critical Referentialist framework (Perry, 2001; Korta and Perry, 2011; de Ponte, Korta and Perry, 2018). Critical referentialists hold that having an object “in mind” involves having a notion of it – a stable structure where information is stored, similar to a file in a file system. Such files have particular objects at their origins. Proper names enter this picture as referential devices associated with notions. In contrast to regular names, a fictional name lacks an origin, giving the notion exceptional relevance in accounting for the truth-conditions of utterances containing the fictional name. While this solution provides a straightforward treatment of parafictional utterances, when applied to metafictional statements – i.e., statements about fictional characters qua cultural artifacts – it generates the wrong truth-conditions. An initial solution assumes that there are two kinds of notions involved in interpreting metafictional and parafictional sentences. Alternatively, as we will argue, the parafictional solution can be refined to distinguish between metafictional and fictional information without multiplying notions, where parafictional and metafictional utterances explore different contextual information in order to deliver the correct kind of truth-conditions. A kind of privileged information we store in our files related to fictional characters consists of categorical information about them: fictional characters are fictional. Categorical information, moreover, is usually taken as shared among the participants of a conversation. Couched in robust pragmatic reasoning, we argue that we can infer the kind of information relevant for the interpretation of an utterance involving a fictional name and arrive at the right truth-conditions for mixed uses and co-predication cases.