Resumo

CRANE, Tim. Sainsbury on Thinking about an Object. Crítica (Méx., D.F.) [online]. 2008, vol.40, n.120, pp.129-139.  Epub 04-Maio-2020. ISSN 0011-1503.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iifs.18704905e.2008.1001.

My commentators point to respects in which the picture provided in Reference without Referents is incomplete. The picture provided no account of how sentences constructed from intensional verbs (like “John thought about Pegasus”) can be true when one of the referring expressions fails to refer. And it gave an incomplete, and possibly misleading, account of how to understand certain serious uses of fictional names, as in “Anna Karenina is more intelligent than Emma Bovary” and “Anna Karenina does not exist”. In the present response, I indicate how I would now wish to make good these deficiencies. The truth of sentences constructed from intensional verbs can be explained in terms of the truth of sentences that are unproblematic for RWR, for example, sentences dominated by operators expressing propositional attitudes. Reflection on the way in which we can temporarily accept commitments we do not in fact share leads to a more nuanced account of serious uses of fictional names, some of which manifest precisely such a temporary acceptance.

Palavras-chave : reference; empty names; fiction; intensionaliy.