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Spotty Scope and Our Relation to Fictions *
Author(s) -
Button Tim
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
noûs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.574
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1468-0068
pISSN - 0029-4624
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00785.x
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , metaphysics , operator (biology) , philosophy , relation (database) , epistemology , computer science , biology , programming language , biochemistry , repressor , database , transcription factor , gene
Whatever the attractions of Tolkein's world, irrealists about fictions do not believe literally that Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. Instead, irrealists believe that, according to The Lord of the Rings {Bilbo is a hobbit}. But when irrealists want to say something like “I am taller than Bilbo”, there is nowhere good for them to insert the operator “according to The Lord of the Rings ”. This is an instance of the operator problem . In this paper, I outline and criticise Sainsbury's (2006) spotty scope approach to the operator problem. Sainsbury treats the problem as syntactic, but the problem is ultimately metaphysical.