Saul Kripke notoriously argued that since the meanings of words are tied to the actual facts about what they refer to, we cannot ever say what it would be for unicorns to exist, because there are no unicorns. This seems to be a paradoxical position. But I recently discovered an example that makes it sound more plausible.
Last weekend, I went to a forensics meet at UW-Stout, which has a special category for musical interpretation. One guy on our team did one on James Bond, and in his intro, he declared that his career goal was to be James Bond–”not a secret agent, not an actor playing James Bond, James Bond.” This is funny because it’s nonsense: no matter how close he comes to imitating the qualities of James Bond in the books and movies in which the character appears, he will never literally be James Bond. This is a case that seems to support Kripke’s view of fictions, and unlike many of the things he’s said, it seems to me extremely intuitive, not relying on any subtle philosophical principles or arguments.
But it could surely be argued that the reason for this is not that James Bond doesn’t exist, but that he is explicitly fictional and tied to a very specific fictional tradition. It may be hasty to generalize to other non-existent things whose fictional status is less clear (perhaps controversial).
Good point. Language is complicated.