Fictional entities Professor Catharine Abell, University of Oxford

Event details

Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series

Catherine will explore the implication of the view that fiction is a social institution for the existence and nature of fictional entities. She will identify two distinct conditions sufficient for the existence of fictional entities, each of which is grounded by a reference-fixing rule of an institution of fiction. One of these rules describes conditions sufficient for the existence of fictional entities that are not constituted by anything, while the other describes conditions sufficient for the existence of fictional entities that are constituted by other things. She will identify the metaphysical dependence base for the existence of fictional entities, and argue that this does not include anything metaphysically mysterious. She will then describes the nature of fictional entities and their identity and individuation conditions.

About the speaker

Professor Catherine Abell

Catharine did an undergraduate degree in philosophy and French at the University of Adelaide, followed by Honours in philosophy. She then did a PhD in philosophy at Flinders University. After temporary lectureships at Macquarie University and the University of Adelaide, she started a permanent lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2006. Shortly afterwards, she took leave to complete a three-year Macquarie University Research Fellowship in Sydney. On returning to Manchester, she was Senior Lecturer then Reader before moving to Oxford to take up her current position at Queen’s in 2019. She has held visiting appointments at the EHESS in Paris, the University of Sydney, and the University of British Columbia.