Another Argument in Favor of (Hybrid) Exceptionalist Realism on Fictional Characters

When we tell a story, we often borrow names from the real world. We might write a novel about a historical figure like Napoleon or a city like London, placing them in a fictional setting. This creates a puzzle for philosophers who study how language works: when we say "Napoleon was arrogant" inside a story, are we talking about the real French emperor who lived centuries ago, or are we talking about a new, imaginary version of him that exists only within the pages of that book? This question sits at the intersection of language and reality, a field that asks whether the things we name in our stories have any kind of real existence. If they do not exist, how can we talk about them meaningfully? If they do exist, what kind of things are they? Understanding this helps us grasp how human imagination interacts with the physical world, and whether our stories create new kinds of objects that we can point to and discuss.

Alberto Voltolini, a philosopher at the University of Turin, offers a fresh perspective on this debate in his recent paper. He argues that when we use real names inside stories, or when we talk about those stories from the outside, we are often referring to something different than the real person. Specifically, he suggests that in these contexts, the name "Napoleon" refers not to the historical emperor, but to a "fictional surrogate"—a distinct, abstract entity that is a copy of the real person, created by the act of storytelling. Voltolini calls this view "hybrid exceptionalist realism." It is "hybrid" because it admits that sometimes we refer to the real person, but "exceptionalist" because it insists that in specific storytelling contexts, we refer to these new, fictional copies. To support this, he introduces a new line of reasoning he calls the "argument from parity of generation," which draws on ideas from the famous philosopher Saul Kripke to show that our minds naturally create these separate entities when we layer stories upon stories.

To understand Voltolini's point, one must first look at how we handle names in simple stories. When an author writes a sentence like "Hamlet is sad," they are pretending that a real prince exists. However, when we step outside the story and say "Hamlet is a fictional character," we are no longer pretending; we are making a true statement about an object that was created by the act of writing. Voltolini notes that there is a clear difference here: inside the story, the name points to a pretend person; outside the story, it points to a real, abstract object that the story brought into existence. He argues that this same pattern happens when we tell stories about stories. Consider a play within a play, such as the murder mystery that Prince Hamlet stages for his uncle. Inside that inner play, the name "Gonzago" refers to a pretend duke. But when we step out of that inner play and talk about the character Gonzago from the perspective of the main play, we are referring to a "fictional fictional character." This is a distinct entity from the pretend duke inside the inner play; it is a real object generated by the main play's act of pretending about a pretend person.

Voltolini extends this logic to stories about real people. He suggests that when we write a novel about Napoleon, or when we say "Napoleon in War and Peace is a model of arrogance," we are engaging in a similar process of generation. Just as the play Hamlet generates a "fictional fictional Gonzago," the novel War and Peace generates a "fictional Napoleon." This fictional Napoleon is not the real emperor; it is a specific, abstract artifact created by the author's imagination. It is a surrogate that stands in for the real man, carrying the properties the author gave him within the story. Voltolini argues that this distinction is necessary to avoid contradictions. If we tried to say that the real Napoleon is both the one who invaded Russia and the one who is portrayed as arrogant in a specific novel, we might run into logical problems if the novel portrays him differently than history does. By separating the real man from his fictional surrogate, we can talk about the story's version of him without confusing him with the historical figure.

The author anticipates a major objection to this idea: if we accept that stories create these new entities, do we not end up filling the universe with too many strange things? Critics might ask why we should accept "fictional surrogates" but not "hallucinatory objects" if someone sees a ghost that isn't there. Voltolini addresses this by pointing out a crucial difference in the nature of these things. He argues that fictional characters are "abstract artifacts"—objects that exist because we created them for a purpose, much like a law or a corporation. They are stable and have a defined nature. In contrast, hallucinations are often just fleeting mental images or errors in perception. They do not have the same stable, created status. Therefore, accepting the existence of fictional characters does not force us to accept every imaginary thing we might dream or hallucinate as a real object in the world. We can be selective, accepting only those entities that fit a specific, robust definition of what it means to be a created object.

Ultimately, Voltolini's paper suggests that our language is more flexible and creative than we often realize. When we use a name like "Napoleon" in a story, we are not merely pointing to a historical fact; we are often pointing to a new, distinct entity that the story itself has brought into being. This view preserves the connection between the story and reality while acknowledging that the story creates its own unique world with its own inhabitants. By recognizing these "fictional surrogates," we can better understand how we talk about the past, how we discuss literature, and how the human mind constructs new realities out of the old ones. The argument does not claim to solve every mystery of language, but it offers a compelling way to see how the act of storytelling generates a layer of reality that sits alongside our own, distinct yet connected.