Fictional Beings And Reference Failure
According to Bertrand Russell's theory of truth, there is only one actual world, and a statement's truth value depends on whether the statement obtains in the actual world. Continuing the tradition of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell posited that a name picks out, or refers to, a real object in the world. The name Genghis Khan thus picks out the 12th and 13th century Mongol leader we know by that name. Any sentence in which we attach a predicate to the name Genghis Khan is true if the predicate obtained in the actual world. Any sentence in which the predicate does not obtain for Genghis Khan is false. The Wikipedia statement “Genghis Khan founded the largest contiguous empire in world history” is thus true, and the statement “Genghis Khan was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London” is false.
Read more about Fictional Beings And Reference Failure: Distinguishing Between Fictional Statements and False Statements, True and False Statements in Fiction, Other Problem Cases: Real Referents in Fictional Worlds
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