 It should be noted that some people who take fictional characters to be abstract objects (e.g., Thomasson 1999) would actually agree with the idea that (G) should be read in the above way — i.e., as a claim about the Sherlock Holmes stories and not about Sherlock Holmes himself. Thomasson’s main argument for believing in fictional characters is based not on sentences like (G) but rather on sentences like the following: