(1)   If created, then “how (and when…) are fictional characters created?” (much discussed since Stuart Brock formulated the challenge in his “The creationist fiction: The case against creationism about fictional characters”, Philosophical Review, 2010).

(2)   If one opts for artifactualism about fictional characters, analogous arguments motivate artifactualism about LeVerrier’s Vulcan as well. (See, for example, Nathan Salmón’s “Nonexistence”, Noûs, 1998; also, Braun, Caplan). I put this in slogan form: “The artifactualism train runs express only”.

This will be a – hopefully smooth – train ride, starting with (1), culminating with a response to (2). 

What if you want to get to a certain local train stop and are told that no local service is running to that destination; meanwhile the express trains you could board take you way further than you had planned? It’s well to choose the train ride only if you are in a position to embrace the express stop available. This is the situation that has recurringly been confronting philosophers over the past half century with respect to one form of realism about fictional characters (FCs): artifactualism, according to which FCs are non-concrete human-made objects, that is, non-concrete artifacts. Various influential arguments suggest that FC-artifactualism is an unavailable local stop on the artifactualism train which offers express service only. Once on board that train, it inescapably wizzes one to a further-away express stop: artifactualism about the posits of failed scientific hypotheses like Babinet’s and LeVerrier’s hypothetical planet Vulcan. Some philosophers, among them Nathan Salmón, David Braun, Ben Caplan, have embraced that destination point. Others, among them Stuart Brock, cautioned to stay off the artifactualism train altogether. 

Can we instead find the elusive local train and disembark at a local stop without taking a stance on artifactualism about the likes of Vulcan? I will argue that we can and have strong reasons to do so. Though the task is especially challenging in the light of a phenomenon I had discussed in prior papers: I envisioned a (contrary to fact) scenario T in which Tolstoy, while writing War and Peace, “was under the mistaken impression that the protagonist, Prince Bolkonsky, like Napoleon (also featured in the novel), was a real person. Introducing the name ‘Andrei Bolkonksy’, Tolstoy intended to refer to a historical figure he thought existed quite independently of his novel” (Zvolenszky 2016, “Fictional characters, mythical objects, and the phenomenon of inadvertent creation”, Res Philosophica). If one is an artifactualist about FCs then in T, due to Tolstoy’s error, his novel-writing activity launched an FC-making process whose outcome was a new FC, Andrei Bolkonsky. Crucially, in T, Tolstoy’s process-launching was unintended, inadvertent. I had argued that such inadvertent authorial launchings are unmysterious and even expected given Saul Kripke’s general arguments (in his 1970 Naming and Necessity lectures) about name-users’ potential error that can, on occasion, afflict authors as well. 

The process-launching aspect of FC-making is a new development on my prior work. In my talk I will argue that authors as launchers who need not complete the process, is a plausible stance according to which making FCs can be group-projects on occasion in the context of novels. And even regularly in the context of other types of works of fiction, for example, when, in the context of making films, comics, a fictional character is created (examples prominently discussed in Chris Tillman & Joshua Spencer’s 2023, “Creature features: Character production and failed explanation in fiction, folklore and theorizing”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy). Yet this process and group-project aspect has been ignored and deemphasized in the literature, which has instead focused on a solo-act model of FC-making, with authors single-handedly making FCs. This solo-act focus affects even local-train-seeking artifactualists like Kripke (in his 1973 Reference and Existence lectures) and more recently, Tillman&Spencer (2023), but is especially prominent in Brock’s (2010) arguments against FC-artifactualism. Along the way, I’ll raise various considerations about philosophical methodology that allow for artifactualists to shift away from the solo-act focus and provide better responses than before to various challenges, including (1) and (2).