Arguing over ficta

In a piece titled Arguing with Brightly over Ficta Bill responded at length to a comment of mine on an earlier post, offered a counter proposal and asked me if and why I rejected it.  The discussion in that thread rather ran into the sands of mutual incomprehension, so here I'd like to respond at greater length to Bill's suggestion.  Here are Bill's concluding paragraphs.

I think Brightly and I can agree that a purely fictional man is not a man, and that a purely fictional alcoholic is not an alcoholic. And yet Bone is at least as real as the novel of which he is the main character. After all, there is the character Bone but no character, Son of Bone. In keeping with Brightly's notion that there is an equivocation on 'purely fictional item,' we could say the following. 'Bone' in the internal sentence 'Bone is an alcoholic' doesn't refer to anything, while 'Bone' in the external sentence 'Bone is a purely fictional character' refers to an abstract object.

We can then reconcile (1) and (2) by replacing the original dyad with

1* There are no purely fictional concreta
2* There are some purely fictional abstracta.

The abstract artifact theory allows us to accommodate our three datanic or near-datanic points. The first was that Bone does not exist. We accommodate it by saying that there is no concretum, Bone. The second was that Bone is a creature of a novelist's creativity. We accommodate that by saying that what Hamilton created was the abstract artifact, Bone*, which exists. Bone does not exist, but the abstract surrogate Bone* does. The third point was that there are truths about Bone that nevertheless do not entail his existence. We can accommodate this by saying that while Bone does not exemplify such properties as being human and being an alcoholic, he encodes them. (To employ terminology from Ed Zalta.) This requires a distinction between two different ways for an item to have a property.

I do not endorse the above solution. But I would like to hear why Brightly rejects it, if he does.

I do reject Bill's proposal.  I don't think Bill grasps the extent to which I reject the language in which Bill couches his solution.  My view is that the term  purely fictional carries risks if used too freely.  I can countenance its use in 'Emma' is a purely fictional literary work but not in Emma Woodhouse is a purely fictional young woman.   There are clearly fictional works and non-fictional works, as a visit to a public library demonstrates.  The purely fictional young women do not form a subset of the young women.  Hence purely fictional in this context  is alienating rather than non-alienating.  What then is a purely fictional young woman?  It's not at all clear to me what this phrase means and I much prefer to avoid it.  I see it as a problem in the philosophy of fiction to explain this usage.  So for me, Bill's account sets off on the wrong foot.  He then says,

And yet Bone is at least as real as the novel of which he is the main character. After all, there is the character Bone but no character, Son of Bone.

I dispute this.  Your telling me all about your mother-in-law may be real enough, but the lady herself may not.  And your not mentioning her daughter has no bearing on the matter.

Bill characterises my position as one of claiming that there is equivocation in the use of purely fictional.  That is not quite right.  It suggests that I think that the phrase has at least two distinct senses.   I agree that it makes sense when applied to books and films,  but have serious reservations that it makes sense when applied to anything else.  Whether the latter usage does make sense is what we are trying to elucidate.  Bill suggests the following distinction,

'Bone' in the internal sentence 'Bone is an alcoholic' doesn't refer to anything  [1], while 'Bone' in the external sentence 'Bone is a purely fictional character' refers to an abstract object [2].

As an adherent of Ed Ockham's 'story-relative' theory of reference I'd have to disagree with (1).  Within Hangover Square 'Bone' refers to Bone, else the story utterly lacks cohesion.  (2) tells us that an abstract object can be an instance of purely fictional character, if there is such a concept. This looks to be along the right lines because it takes fictional characters out of the realm of the concrete.  However, although I think there is room for a Zaltaian abstract object in this view of things, I don't think it's Bone himself.   Rather it's the idea of Bone that reading Hamilton's novel invokes in us. Let's call this idea Bone*.  We can say with Zalta that Bone* encodes exactly those properties that Hamilton tells us Bone possesses (if we read attentively).  And we can say that Bone* exemplifies Van Inwagen creature of fiction properties such as acquired through reading 'Hangover Square' in 2014.  Also, with respect to the properties it encodes, Bone* is incomplete.  If Hamilton doesn't tell us then we have no information as to Bone's birthday, say.  So Bone* has one of the essential characteristics of a Vallicellan intentional object.

See also: Ficta and Impossibilia