Organon F
Volume 28, February 2021, Issue 1, Pages 135–167
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article | Special issue on Names and Fictions
How Can Millians Believe in Superheroes?
Juliana Faccio Lima
What is the content of beliefs expressed by sentences with fictional names? Millianism has notoriously struggled to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Some Millians have argued that fictional names are empty names. But such a view entails that the belief that Superman has impressive superpowers and the belief that Aquaman has impressive superpowers have the same content, contrary to our intuitions. Others have argued that fictional names refer to fictional entities. But this view has a long-standing problem, Frege’s Puzzle, and many philosophers are skeptical that Millians have successfully addressed it, despite commendable efforts. In this paper, I put forward a different Millian Theory of fictional proper names that by-passes these and other objections related to belief content. The novelty of my proposal partially rests on a distinction I draw between semantic content and belief content—as opposed to a distinction between belief content and belief state or a way of grasping the content, as it is commonly found in Millian accounts—in a framework where belief contents are not part of the meaning of names.
Belief content, empty names; Frege’s Puzzle; belief ascription, Millianism.
Author
Juliana Faccio Lima 
Affiliation
Ashoka University
Address
Department of Philosophy, Plot No. 2, Rajiv Gandhi Education City, National Capital Region P.O.Rai, Sonepat Haryana-131029, India
Received
13 April 2020
Accepted
24 October 2020
Published online
28 February 2021
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Faccio Lima, J. (2021). How Can Millians Believe in Superheroes? Organon F, 28(1), 135–167. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28107
Chicago
Faccio Lima, Juliana. 2021. "How Can Millians Believe in Superheroes?" Organon F 28 (1): 135–167. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28107
Harvard
Faccio Lima, J. (2021). How Can Millians Believe in Superheroes? Organon F, 28(1), pp. 135–167. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28107
© Juliana Faccio Lima
https://www.sav.sk/?lang=sk&doc=journal-list&part=article_response_page&journal_article_no=25590
The above URL is linked with the article's response page. The response page is a permanent location that is associated with the article's DOI number.
