Much Ado About Nonexistence: Fiction and Reference

The problem of the nature of fiction and the problem of nonexistence are closely tied because fiction often talks about nonexistent entities. In Fiction, Reference, and Nonexistence, A. P. Martinich and Avrum Stroll, two of America's leading philosophers, explore fiction and undertake an analytic philosophical study of fiction and its reference and its relation to truth. Included in the discussion is the authors' new, contemporary theory of fiction developed as an extension of the speech act theory of H. P. Grice, as well as the relationship between nonexistence and Bertrand Russell's well-known theory of definite descriptions, and Hilary Putnam's theory of the relationship between common names and the world.