Creationism and Cardinality

Creationism about fictional entities is the doctrine that fictional entities come into existence when the fictions about them are composed: it may be contrasted both with a more platonist view according to which all potential fictional entities have always existed, and eliminativist views according to which there are no merely fictional entities. Creationism is alleged to have a number of advantages over platonism. Three important ones are parsimony, since we do not need to postulate quite so many kinds of fictional entities; a more naturalistic flavour, since the created entities are plausibly thought to be dependent on concrete goings-on; and a better fit, at least in some respects, with ordinary talk, since we talk as if e.g. Conan Doyle is the creator of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the Sherlock Holmes stories.