What is the difference between Hamlet and me? Fiction, metaphysics and the nature of our moral thinking

Abstract

Starting from the main current views this essay considers whether entities (e.g. characters) in fiction should be viewed as abstract objects. I highlight some features of the historical concrete-abstract distinction, and, in particular, how entities in fiction are involved in our moral thinking. Here I call attention to an aspect of moral thinking orthogonal to that which currently divides moral realists and moral fictionalists and sketch an argument for fictional entities being in a specific sense concrete. Although the article does not, per se, call into question the approach to metaphysics according to which fictional characters are not like concrete objects, it exemplifies how a different perspective on the job of metaphysics (e.g. Cora Diamond's realistic spirit) gives the problem of fictional entities a radically different shape.