Sign and representation: when virtual is real

Virtuality is a peculiarity of representation systems given their capacity of going beyond here and now, and for their capacity of action upon us. The paper considers, within the field of analytic philosophy, some ways in which the virtual abstract entities are understood as real; it analyzes Frege’s difficulties to recognize thoughts as real. The paper also focuses in Carnap and Quine’s reflections in relation to abstract entities, to which they give a special ontological weight that has to do with their belonging to a representation system, be it a linguistic frame or a theory.