system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is Michael Jordan in Space Jam a fictional character?
gpt
This is interesting to think about in connection to Kripke's *Naming and Necessity*. He proposes the following sort of picture for how a name (in your mouth) refers to that object:

1. Someone initially dubbed that object with that name (think of christening a ship).
2. The usage of that name got passed down a link of causally related uses.
3. You use the name as part of that link.

On this sort of picture, the name 'Michael Jordan' as used in *Space Jam* refers to Michael Jordan (the real life person) as 1. his parents dubbed him Michael Jordan 2. a causal chain passed the usage of that name down and 3. the writers/performers in Space Jam used the name as part of that causal chain.

Given that a necessary condition for being a fictional character plausibly is that the name for that character fails to refer to any physical object, Michael Jordan is not (by broadly Kripkean lights) a fictional character in Space Jam.