The fact-hood of certain entities like "Santa" and "Pegasus"?
I and some others know about @Banno's non-denoting Pegasus of the past threads of his. Some might know how these threads appeal to the objective or subjective divide of knowledge, and along with what that means when someone asks if Santa or a hole is real, whether that means anything.
The latter Wittgenstein isn't helpful about this in many ways, as the feature of the form of life of which (a peculiar way of saying) Santa is "in this world" is part of the intersubjective web-of-beliefs shared amongst Western children about his existence on the North Pole.
Now, I don't think the early Wittgenstein was at all wrong with rephrasing the question about the fact of Santa's existence, as the very feature of fact hood/factoid entails a verificationist declarative to be known by the logical positivists to look out at objectively or surjectively onto the world and discern the truth of being a fact. The previous sentence seems somewhat hard to understand, as in, 'how does a fact have a gerund of to be or even being'... Yet, apparently it makes sense upon inspection upon discovering the truth of an ontological entity such as a "hole" or "Santa" to be true or false.
So, with that in mind, what's wrong with asking if some ontological entity obtains as a fact, in resolving how it obtains as one of factual or some intersubjective sort?
The latter Wittgenstein isn't helpful about this in many ways, as the feature of the form of life of which (a peculiar way of saying) Santa is "in this world" is part of the intersubjective web-of-beliefs shared amongst Western children about his existence on the North Pole.
Now, I don't think the early Wittgenstein was at all wrong with rephrasing the question about the fact of Santa's existence, as the very feature of fact hood/factoid entails a verificationist declarative to be known by the logical positivists to look out at objectively or surjectively onto the world and discern the truth of being a fact. The previous sentence seems somewhat hard to understand, as in, 'how does a fact have a gerund of to be or even being'... Yet, apparently it makes sense upon inspection upon discovering the truth of an ontological entity such as a "hole" or "Santa" to be true or false.
So, with that in mind, what's wrong with asking if some ontological entity obtains as a fact, in resolving how it obtains as one of factual or some intersubjective sort?
Comments (61)
Not having a material existence is no bar to existence for immaterial beings. The Holy Spirit does not have a material existence. Dead authors whose books we read do not now have a material existence. People have no problem speaking to the Holy Spirit and referencing what Karl Marx or Hammurabi said. The latter, Hammurabi, wrote a code of laws which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Shamash doesn't have much of an existence these days, because the culture in which he once existed is long, long gone. He probably hasn't had a message in his inbox for 3,000 years. But we can still name him, and I suppose under an odd set of circumstances, he could become a hot cultural item again.
If language is use, then we give life to immaterial things (like the Holy Spirit or the milk of human kindness, and a zillion other things), so that "they exist".
Most of the time we do not have any difficulty maintaining the line (in our heads) between material beings (like your cleaning lady), perpetually immaterial beings like Santa Claus, and immaterial beings who were once actual warm bodies -- like Henry VIII or Cleopatra. Sometimes we trip over the categories.
Towards these immaterial beings, does the fact obtain by precising it if and only if it is described as a historical account of its (to sound like Kripke) baptism?
@Banno, what do you think?
Does Pegasus exist? Depends on what you mean, but once you set that straight, it's pretty straight forward. Pegasus is a mythical creature, hence pegasus exists as a mythical creature. But of course pegasus is not real, so Pegasus does not exist, too.
That's the sort of analysis that results from the linguistic turn, as in the later Wittgenstein and company, so they are of use here.
My point is that stating the fact that Pegasus exists already reduces the issue to stating it as a mythical issue. Hence no need for stating that it does or does not exist.
People know how to talk about Santa Claus and Pegasus the same way we know how to talk about Joe Biden and shoe horns; love and chickens; and coelacanths and electrons. After a certain age and with a certain level of education, we know what other people mean when they use these words. There isn't any confusion.
Serious question - Given all that, does it matter whether the existence or reality of something is a fact?
I was so puzzled by how many children believed in Santa Claus, when I knew that there was no evidence for such a person. I knew that my parents gave presents to me and the chimneys were blocked. Personally, I find the idea of Santa Claus as one of the most unhelpful ideas, although I do see this as a basis for thinking about the fictionious, especially in the ideas presented to children.
I like the idea of Santa Claus. I think it, along with other things, teaches kids that the world cares for them. That they belong here. Santa certainly isn't necessary for that, but it's an important lesson children need. They need to build a world for themselves that they can trust and believe.
Similar to Banno's categorization of Pegasus as "mythical", both Pegasus and Santa are fictional characters. Fictional characters are not best described as 'not real'. Fictional characters have actual effects/affects. Thus, they are most certainly real, just as all things that have an effect/affect are.
What a profound topic for debate. Really. It would seem 'nothing' is real. Apparently it goes for a premium of $3,500+ a square foot. Wow. That makes the last few years of my love life priceless.
"Pegasus is a myth" implies that there is a Pegasus. It doesn't imply that Pegasus is a physical animal.
"The cat is black" is a fact. Here the fact is a true statement. "Fact" is a synonym for "true statement".
That the cat is black is also a fact.
Hence we can write "the cat is black" is true only if the cat is black. Facts as true statements and facts as how things are are two ways of saying the same thing.
What ever. All of that can be assumed for the purposes of the example.
"This sentence contains five words" is true IFF that sentence contains five words.
I don't see a substantive point to your reply.
Spoken by certain philosophers, maybe. Usually, it implies the opposite.
Quoting tim wood
Yep. That's the point of this thread.
And the challenge is to allow meaning in the myth (or fiction) while respecting the usual implication.
The cop-out is to allow the meaning by disrespecting the usual implication, and instead multiplying allowable senses of "exist". E.g. "exists mythically", "exists in the fictional domain", etc.
I don't want to evade the puzzles that it poses by pretending that its usual meaning is other than it is: which is that certain words are or aren't succeeding in referring to certain objects.
You are pretending that words have meanings.
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Banno
Only in a manner of speaking.
Quoting bongo fury
Edit: actually it's not so much an explanation as saying "look over there!"
Quoting Elgin, With Reference to Reference
Can you re-parse your point in terms of individuals?
Quoting Elgin, With Reference to Reference
OK, then: who does this?
As opposed to, say, the claim that "Pegasus" refers to a fictive flying horse?
A subtler opponent than the believer in fictive entities.
So you don't believe Frodo walked into Mordor? There are no fictive folk?
Quoting Banno
Literally, obviously not. Don't you care to describe fictive language-use literally?
Mention-selection is one way.
Frodo is a Hobbit; hence there are Hobbits.
You seem to be denying that existential generalisation applies to fiction.
Are you sure that's what you want?
Quantification over domains of categories isn't hard to do for mythological creatures like Pegasus.
So, talking about historical or literary facts about Pegasus, isn't as misleading as stating that Pegasus both exists and doesn't.
Santa and Pagasus exist, in the sense that we refer to them.
Santa and Pagasus are all mythical, so they aren't real.
When we say "Is Santa Claus real?" we're implicitly ruling out the Santa Claus that is real as a referent. We don't mean this guy:
we mean this guy:
who's a mishmash of the other guy, older pagan and mythological figures like Thor, and a hugely successful Coca Cola advertising campaign.
We confuse ourselves because when we can all describe and recognise the same thing, we meet a criterion for objective reality (consensus), but the second Santa Claus only exists as a class of symbols in media. It is second-hand evidence only.
You can be deceived into believing it's real and that first-hand evidence is evidence that he is a real object (meeting him in his grotto as an impressionable child), or you can go along with the fun knowing that Santa Claus doesn't actually exist as an object (even though there was a real Saint Nicholas, we don't mean him). Either way, this puts him in a category along with lies, deceptions and hallucinations: things we can refer to because we have the ability to encode (recall, describe, perhaps agree about) symbols that resemble signifiers but aren't.
I could make up a fictional character on the spot and ask if she is real, and we'd probably agree she is not, and yet she would have her encoded symbols, perhaps not as exhaustive as Santa's but enough to refer to her with in conversation. The only difference with Samantha Smooth, dentist by day, vigilante at night except when she's DJing, is that most people wouldn't know who I was talking about, or know of her symbols to talk about her, which is just the consensus = objective trick of fiction.
Not at all. I'm denying that such an application creates a new species of existence, any more than it creates actual unicorns or hobbits.
Quoting Shawn
So, to avoid contradiction, you will refrain from denying that 'Pegasus' refers?
Quoting Cheshire
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Wheatley
One will do. Any child too smart for their own good knows that distinguishing "existing" from "real" (and from "actual", "subsisting" etc.) is merely,
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, although it's useful to avoid confusing use and mention, as Elgin explains, above.
:chin:
If the only issue is about what the referent denotes, then stating the denoting fact about Pegasus seems elucidating, no?
Some information about Pegasus refers to literary factoids about "Pegasus", no? So, if something needs to be referred to, then we can phrase it as, the fact that Pegasus has "X" according to "Y" literary or historical fact, yes?
Ah, I think I see. Facts not things? Because Tractatus? We probably aren't much help to each other. Anyway my question wasn't very focused. Still. Interesting thread, so thanks.
Btw I'm confused by your employment of "referent", "denotes" and "denoting fact"... please clarify?
Pretty much. It's all in the OP about what I think is the proper thing to do when confronted with such issues as a non-denoting flaccid designator such as "Santa" or "Pegasus".
Quoting bongo fury
I'm not sure I'll be of help here, as my use of "literary fact" or "historical factoid" might be interchangeable with "denoting" or "denoting fact".
Did someone claim it did?
The what now?
Quoting Banno
Santa has a red hat, therefore Santa exists.
But Santa does not exist.
How do you reconcile this?
Isn't it that in the first case the domain ranges over fictional characters, while in the second it ranges over things that are real?
That doesn't imply that we have two sorts of existence, but that existence can be used for different cases.
Different cases? Clearly not. Different treatments of the same case. Different senses of "exist". Different sorts.
Quoting bongo fury
The desperate sophistry is unnecessary if you can overcome your aversion to the study of reference as a relation to things. Merely allow that Santa is not one of the things so related. Study instead the indirect reference to (e.g. mention-selection of) Santa-pictures, beardy-old-man-pictures, real beardy old men etc.
I know.
So we go back and go over it again, slowly and carefully...
I'll drag this over from elsewhere...
Quoting Banno
The existence of Pegasus is take as granted in setting up a discussion of Pegasus.
DO you have an objection to anything here?
You can have logics that allow it, or logics that don't. It really doesn't matter.
In some sense there's no problem about the existence of fictional objects – we all know precisely well what we mean by saying they do or don't exist, and no one is confused. The problems only come in when we try to formalize languages talking about these things and try to keep the rules of inference straight among them.
There are two goals creating such a language might have – as an engineering project, to make sure everything works in the way we want it to, or as an empirical project, to formalize something that approximates 'natural' speech about fictional objects.
As to the former, you can do whatever you want. As to the latter, I tend to think the issue was definitively settled by the Lewisian analysis from the 70s that made use of Kripkean modal logics, and that there is no interesting issue here. People continue to write about it, but that's the nature of philosophy – when your salary is paid by writing about something, you'll write about it.
No comment.
Quoting Banno
Neither slow nor careful.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Right, no need for Quine to write On What There Is, then.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Hard to see how you got that impression. Quine very deftly traces the problem to ancient puzzles of ordinary language.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Ok ...
Good point. I could have worded that better. That we can talk about Pegasus is taken for granted in setting up a discussion about Pegasus. What I have in mind is much the same as setting up individual constants.
The fact that Santa exists is a fiction of sorts.
So too, Pegasus.
Agreed!
Who is honestly puzzled by fictional entities? Who is confused about what they are? Is there anyone who is worried, for example, that they will run into Harry Potter on the subway? No; we all know what we mean in saying either that he exists or doesn't, and what a character in a book is. It's only philosophers that confuse themselves.
Care to rephrase? This subject matter interests me but haven’t really seen the point of this thread yet.
Note: I would class ALL objective knowledge as ‘strong intersubjectivity’ because I’m only going to accept certainty as an item existing in set boundaries with established rules.