How do you explain this process?
When an author decides to write a book and create fictional entities like Harry Potter, or Homer from The Illiad, where do these fictional entities exist? In what substrate or form do they exist in?
Does this point towards some form of idealism on the part of the imaginative process of writing a fictional work or even if you want to take a Platonist view "operations on syntactical and grammatical rules of logic and numbers"?
Does this point towards some form of idealism on the part of the imaginative process of writing a fictional work or even if you want to take a Platonist view "operations on syntactical and grammatical rules of logic and numbers"?
Comments (24)
If a philosopher decides to classify such fictional entities in categories, is he not in the same situation as the author? In what sense and where do the ontological categories of the philosopher exist? How does ontology exist? What is the 'form' of the 'form' itself? Can the form be mental? But the mental is itself a form. The form or the meaning-charged sign or the concept is maybe what avoids the what-is-it of philosophy while making it possible.
Popper talked of 'World 3,' some kind of space that humans share. Your question reminds me of the question of what it is like to have or be 'in' a language (which means being with others at least in some virtual way as far as I can make out.) BTW, I think Popper at the very least sees the issue. I don't accept or reject any particular part of his theory. I just respect his response to our naked situation with something other than denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds
Yes, all good questions or a roundabout way of saying the same. What else do you think?
Here's the dialogue:
Wow!
Wow. People really do hate philosophy at times. But then what happened to Socrates again?
Yeah, I don't even know what to make of his quip. Was it in good faith or what?
What is this?
Well I think we are 'in' language-with-others in a way that's hard to specify. In some ways the isolated ego is a theoretical fiction. I've been looking in Husserl lately. He's pretty awesome. As far as I can tell, he's seeing in what way Plato got something right without adopting Plato wholesale.
We can say that we construct concepts, that they are mental, but they also play by their own rules in some sense. There is a certain 'necessity' in mathematics for instance. And perhaps there is even a kind of dialectical necessity in the concept of philosophy, a 'natural' way from position to position. So maybe thinking of concepts as 'within' the subject (however true or valuable in some sense) simultaneously betrays the mundane experience of the subject living within these same concepts. The whole thing is difficult and messy. Will we ever be done saying what it is to say? Meaning what it is to mean? Probably not.
Good faith. I am pro-philosophy. I am a weirdo who stubbornly uses language that gets itself misunderstood. I would rather say something big awkwardly than say lots of trivialities correctly. It's better to fail at really trying something in my view.
By really trying something? I agree.
As for the "it´s in the mind of the author" it´s an idle, or too practical answer in my opinion. It´s like saying: where is the videogame? in the computer. The real question is where Clark Kent and Superman (that for me are different persons) are ontologically speaking. I´d rather say they exist in a meta-physical plane. In Spain we had a philosopher, Gustavo Bueno, that studied these things deeply, and elaborated the doctrine of Philosophical Materialism. I need to read something from the guy, as he´s supposed to be one of the best philosophers in XX-XXI Europe.
The exist in any substrate they do exist in as information, but they are something else.
Though maybe they don't properly "exist" until they appear by means of a particular cognitive processing. They are irreducible to theoretical script or physical processes because appearance is necessary for being recognized and recognition requires a whole train of relatively conditioned and logistically dynamic baggage.
Is appearance necessary for being recognized and is a particular recognition necessary for "existence"?
In what capacity does the unread and therefore unthought of fictional character exist? As potential and likely recognition of what appears, as scripts yet to appear and be interpreted by biological machinery.
Or fictional characters don't "exist" period.
That's obnoxious. If you live in the US, you should see if your state has anti-bullying and/or public accommodation laws. The psychiatry comment would arguable run afoul of either (the latter for discriminating against the mentally ill). Come to think of it, since disability is a protected class, it could even constitute a hate crime.
I'm not saying you should sue, but you could point it out to this clown. Or maybe you should sue...
Yeah, no apologies and another mentor on the same forum thought I was on drugs, and basically affirmed what the other mentor thought about me. I'm going to stick to my safe abode here on these forums from now on.
Thoughts?
It sounds like those guys could actually benefit severely from some alternative perspectives in their lives, but no one can blame you for staying away
Haha, I agree. I have no idea what I should do. I suppose I'll stay here in this safe space.
Calling out someone as "crazy" hardly ever produced any good and just is a sign of cowardice.
The metaphysically adept are like deep sea cutters and welders. Their confidence and skill of logical consistency as well as their knowledge of prior arguments allow them to brave the waters of chaos to cut or fix something somewhere. What they are welding is like the structure of their own minds, which in effect restructures the world, but this is also true of everyone whether we are aware of it or not.
[quote=Borges]"He comprehended that the effort to mold the incoherent and vertiginous matter dreams are made of was the most arduous task a man could undertake, though he might penetrate all the enigmas of the upper and lower orders: much more arduous than weaving a rope of sand or coining the faceless wind."[/quote]
~J.L. Borges, Circular Ruins
Metaphysics is like weaving a rope of sand or coining the faceless wind, toward what end?
There is something about a story where we want something to be true. Or what is happening.
And maybe we didn't know that was a desire before the telling.
It is hard to put the cart before the horse.
But that is another story......
I just wanted to say that I loved this post.