Language, Meaning, Referent, and Fictional Characters

It is commonly believed that words derive their meaning from what they refer to. For example, when the noun “Judson” is uttered its meaning obtains in virtue of who it picks out. If there is more than one Judson, and the context requires it, then further specification, such as a last name, may be required to single out the referent. With the referent fixed, it is believed that the meaning naturally follows: “Judson Burton is the person with such and such characteristics and properties.”

Yet, it also seems clear that meaning cannot solely derive from reference. For example, how does the noun “Sherlock Holmes” get its meaning? Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and does not exist. But how can we talk about something which does not exist? How can we talk about nothing? (This raises another interesting point, if words get their meaning by referring to things, how does the word “nothing” get its meaning? Nothing does not exist and if it did its very existence would contradict the meaning of the term it is suppose to lend meaning to through the referent relation). If our commonsense idea about how words get their meaning is correct (i.e, through a referent relation), and if the intuition that we cannot talk about nothing is right, then it seems to follow that fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, must exist in some way—perhaps as abstract objects outside of space and time. Positing the existence of a whole array of fictional characters as abstract objects may provide the best explanation for how meaning is infused into language and will preserve our commonsense notion of language.

Someone may object that such extremes are unnecessary. The names of fictional characters derive their meaning, as the objection may go, from referring to the properties that supervene or ride upon the set of statements told about the fictional character. However, this claim cannot make sense of our ability to rule a statement about a fictional character as true or false even though the information is not contained in any of the statements about that fictional character (e.g., “Anna Karenina is more intelligent than Emma Bovary”—no fiction contains both of these characters and neither of their fictions contains this comparison, yet we are able to rule it as true). So, in the end, it seems that fictional characters may in fact exist. It makes the best sense of our language and it may explain the psychological exhilaration we feel when we come into contact with them—they are after all abstract objects from another realm.