Abstract The problems of making and evaluating counterfactual claims about fictional characters cannot be adequately handled without taking into account the practices of literary criticism, interpretation, and re-creation. The direct-reference theory of names explains only a subset of the phenomena of fiction and explains away the rest as irrelevant or pseudo-problems, whereas some criticisms of that theory bring in metaphysical concepts that may obscure the issue. This paper suggests that the indeterminacy of fictions and the conventions of the aforementioned practices are sufficient basis for explaining and assessing such counterfactual claims. In this view, fiction ceases to be understood as a phenomenon sui generis; it is instead an institutionalized use of the stipulative or computational aspects of language that are at work in other areas as well. Thus, these results can be brought into line with recent ideas in the fields of the philosophy of mathematics, relevance theory, and cognitive studies.

中文翻译：

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关于虚构人物的反事实主张：哲学和文学观点

摘要在不考虑文学批评，阐释和再创作的实践的情况下，无法正确处理关于虚构人物的反事实主张的制定和评估问题。名称的直接指称理论仅解释了小说现象的一个子集，而将其余部分解释为无关紧要的伪问题，而对该理论的一些批评则引入了形而上学的概念，可能掩盖了这个问题。本文认为，小说的不确定性和上述惯例的约定是解释和评估这种反事实主张的充分依据。按照这种观点，小说不再被理解为一种普遍现象。相反，它是对语言规定性或计算性方面的制度化使用，这些方面也在其他领域发挥作用。因此，这些结果可以与数学哲学，关联理论和认知研究领域的最新思想相吻合。