Although both are prima facie legitimately said not to exist, possible unactual objects and fictional objects are very different types of entities. The former are concrete entities which, albeit they do not actually exist, might have existed. Their incompleteness is accidental, since it regards only the possible worlds in which they do not exist. The latter are a particular kind of abstract objects, namely correlates of sets of properties, which subsist in the worlds only in which they are constructed as such correlates. Insofar their constitutive sets of properties are finite, they are essentially incomplete entities which possess these properties internally. The ontological difference between these entities is paralleled by a semantic distinction: the former are directly designated, the latter are Russellian denotations of the descriptions expressing their having their constituent properties internally.
Ficta versus possibilia
VOLTOLINI, Alberto
1994-01-01
Abstract
Although both are prima facie legitimately said not to exist, possible unactual objects and fictional objects are very different types of entities. The former are concrete entities which, albeit they do not actually exist, might have existed. Their incompleteness is accidental, since it regards only the possible worlds in which they do not exist. The latter are a particular kind of abstract objects, namely correlates of sets of properties, which subsist in the worlds only in which they are constructed as such correlates. Insofar their constitutive sets of properties are finite, they are essentially incomplete entities which possess these properties internally. The ontological difference between these entities is paralleled by a semantic distinction: the former are directly designated, the latter are Russellian denotations of the descriptions expressing their having their constituent properties internally.
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