External Thought and Talk about Fiction

This chapter examines the ontological implications of the various ways in which we can think and talk about fictional entities and examines the roles that external thought and talk about fiction can play in the institution of fiction. It argues that those who deny the existence of fictional entities are unable to accommodate the ways in which we think and talk about fictional entities from an external perspective, and that this gives us good reason to accept fictional entities into our ontology. It argues that external thought and talk about fiction are important to the identification of interpretative fictive content. It also argues that such thought and talk can play an important role in improving the stability of the content-determining rules of fiction institutions, and that they can help participants in fiction institutions to coordinate on rules that provide equilibrium solutions to novel coordination problems of communicating imaginings.