Amie Thomasson

American philosopher who has developed easy ontology — a deflationary approach to metaphysics according to which existence questions can often be answered 'easily' by appeal to linguistic and conceptual facts.

Fiction and Metaphysics: fictional characters are abstract artifacts created by authors. Easy Ontology: questions like 'are there numbers?' are answered easily — if true sentences quantify over them, they exist. The existence question is trivial; the substantive questions are about nature and importance.