What kind of entity is a fictional character?

[Speakpigeon]

I'm interested to know anyone's thoughts on the question, what kind of entity is a fictional character - like Hamlet or Anna Karenina.

Whether fictional characters exist is a prior question, I think. I'm assuming here that they do.

I'd like to say, it is a pseudo-object, wholly an effect of the text that purports to describe him/her. But this may be too formal to serve as a definition.

A fictional character may be a subjective construct (imaginary being) or an objective one (a character in novel, film, comics, etc.) Fictional also suggests a substantial story line, a narrative. An imaginary friend would therefore qualify as a fictional character although not normally from the point of view of the subject who thinks it's real. If you think you've seen a ghost then it's not a fictional character to you if you think it's was a real ghost. It wouldn't be fictional either without a substantial narrative as to its doings.

As narratives require some doing, most fictional characters anyone knows about would be of the objective kind like Hamlet. As imaginary beings, they only ever exist inside our minds. What there is objectively in the case of Hamlet and co. are pieces of paper with strings of letters written on them. What makes Hamlet objective is that we believe your Hamlet is the same as my Hamlet. Yet, fundamentally, Hamlet, even the objective one, is still only somehow inside our minds. This is so because there needs to be a mind to make sense of a fictional character as most people think of them (obviously). We have to be the measure of what is a fictional character.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm working on fictional discourse now, so I'm into this. But my second reason for the thread was the question, can existence be a predicate? The classic refutation of the Ontological Argument that I heard in college was based on the claim that existence is not a predicate. If it is, though, what are the consequences for the Ontological Argument?

We can have a thread on that if anyone wants, but perhaps that question was done to death on the old board.

There is no other possibility. Existence has to be a predicate or we are all talking gibberish.

Whatever words mean, they mean what we use them to mean. We all use sentences such as "crime exists", regarding them as true, and therefore as uncontroversially meaningful, where existence is a property of something we call "crime", whatever it may be.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

1): we can talk about the class of bachelors and the class of married people. These classes do not intersect; there is no member of both. hence, we cannot quantify over both classes. In the case you mention, it is false that the thing you are talking about is a married bachelor. You are just making an illicit conjunction of the predicates married and bachelor - illicit by the rules of language. Russell is still correct that it is not the case that there is some x that is married and is a bachelor. So you're really just talking about married x's and bachelors and making a mistake in conjoining them.

The use of classes in logic since Russell should be regarded as a technical matter. The case is similar to that of using a computer to determine the result of 2+ 2. We don't need the computer but we can use it if we want to. One shouldn't confuse the means and the end. Formal logic isn't the same thing as the logic we access through our sense of logic. The formal logic's concept of material implication doesn't fit our intuition of ordinary if...then statements and of what we call "deduction". There is currently an effort by some logicians to produce a "universalist logic" that tries to properly reflects how we use language.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

To believe a character in the mind is as existent as one in the physical world can hide a naive concept of existence. If Papa Smurf is blue, his blueness is not a real property of blueness as in the actual world.

An example: I can imagine a famous blue painting, is the concept blue? No, it is not, it is perhaps a binary instruction in my neural net, which by virtue of the process of fantasy which is neverending, it is never the same to begin with. The real painting's blueness is actually a "property" (actually a reproduceable phenomenon) due to calcium copper silicate in the pigments which make it look blue to my visual cortex by afference from my photoreceptors. There is no such physico-chemical phenomenon involving calcium copper silicate in my brain, therefore blueness is not a property of the painting as I imagine it. What happens in minds when the stimulus "Gainsborough's The Blue Boy" is given to a human being is not the same as the real thing--the reaction of photons on bouncing off the physical Blue Boy painting.

There is no actual painting that is actually blue. It may be true that the painting, if there is one to beging with, has some property which results in it looking blue to you and me. But blueness has to be entirely within the envelop of your skull if it is in physical space, which maybe it is not, and so we got to compare blueness attributed to some imaginary or fictional painting to blueness as achieved through vision as well as to blueness as we may remember what it looks like. The output is, it's all in our mind. Real people are just as imagined as fictional ones. The quality or format of these representations varies but they are all representations, some possibly true somehow, other no doubt false.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Not all physical experiences are subjective experiences. Some trees fall in the middle of the forest where no one can hear or see them.

That is not an experience, it is a physical event. An unexperienced event. For the event to be experienced requires an experiencer...a brain. The falling tree itself experiences nothing.

And you know this because... what?

He doesn't.

We can say "the train experienced a failure". And so far trains are not known to have brains. So, trees can experienced a fall in the forest with no one hearing.

Plus, if that's what you meant, it might well be that a tree falling in the forest does experience something, like, subjectively.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

If you are unconscious during an operation, you do not experience your operation.

We can still say that the body of the patient is experiencing surgery, or whatever.
EB

 

[DBT]

He doesn't. .

I don't know what, precisely? That trees have neither sensory apparatus to gather information or neural networks to process information in order to form conscious perception of the external world? Therefore trees are very unlikely to have a conscious experience of the world?

Or are you suggesting that senses and a brain is not a necessary physical apparatus for consciousness experience?

 

[DBT]

If you are unconscious during an operation, you do not experience your operation.

We can still say that the body of the patient is experiencing surgery, or whatever.
EB

The body is being operated on. But because the brain is unconscious (the brain being the seat of consciousness) there is no experience of the operation. As far as the person is concerned, it is an unconscious event, and not an 'experience' they are having.

 

[fromderinside]

The body is being operated on. But because the brain is unconscious (the brain being the seat of consciousness) there is no experience of the operation. As far as the person is concerned, it is an unconscious event, and not an 'experience' they are having.

I think the bar for experience is the capability to experience. I don't think unconsciousness implies the inability of a sentient being to experience. Obviously much of what we do and experience in actually never found in consciousness.

So I agree a tree doesn't have the equipment to experience, but, I withhold judgement whether it can be technically said to experience via other changes in its condition like no water or nutrients available to the fallen tree.

 

[DBT]

The body is being operated on. But because the brain is unconscious (the brain being the seat of consciousness) there is no experience of the operation. As far as the person is concerned, it is an unconscious event, and not an 'experience' they are having.

I think the bar for experience is the capability to experience. I don't think unconsciousness implies the inability of a sentient being to experience. Obviously much of what we do and experience in actually never found in consciousness.

So I agree a tree doesn't have the equipment to experience, but, I withhold judgement whether it can be technically said to experience via other changes in its condition like no water or nutrients available to the fallen tree.

The difficulty here appears to related to the nature of 'experience.' If an unconscious event may be called an ''experience,'' there must be some factor that sets an 'experience' apart from an 'event' - otherwise what would distinguish one from the other?

 

[Speakpigeon]

The house experienced a power outage of less than five seconds.

Learn your English, Kiddo.
EB

 

[mountainman]

I'm interested to know anyone's thoughts on the question, what kind of entity is a fictional character - like Hamlet or Anna Karenina.

Whether fictional characters exist is a prior question, I think. I'm assuming here that they do.

I'd like to say, it is a pseudo-object, wholly an effect of the text that purports to describe him/her. But this may be too formal to serve as a definition.

I haven't read through all the responses but has anyone introduced the concept of historicity - or the quality of historical existence?

Existence and the present moment appear to get logged into the historical record studied by the field of history.

Fictional characters often enter the world inside a codex or book or story, but do not get physically born on planet Earth, live and die.

 

[Saint_of_Me]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/

IMO sounds like convoluted philosophical nonsense. You may be heading towards the 'are thoughts real discussion?

it is all biochemical states in your brain.. I believe the inability to distinguish between reality and fiction is considered a disorder.

OK, I thought this was a philosophy forum. But I'm down with it's all biochemical states in my brain. Reductionism rocks.

Reductionism DOES rock. And it will blow your mind sometimes.

Especially stuff about the brain. Like the aforementioned neurotransmitters. Which, after all, along with comditioned response and environment are the sources for all of our emotions. And our personalities.

Here is a reductionist tidbit for you, that occurred to me just the other day.

I was out jogging, and, as so often happens--especially lately, for some reason--I cam across a view, a sight, that gave me one of those great Deja Vu moments.

I was running through an old-money, shady neighborhood, and as I went by this particular house, a 100-year-old two-story affair, it reminded me of visiting my grandparents' house some 40 years ago, as a little kid. It was as if for a moment I was magically transported back in time.

So strong of a feeling that I actually stopped running and stopped for a bit.

So....think about what is actually going on here: a combination of lightwaves enters your eye and passes through your optic nerve and then travels to that part of your brain where, somehow, among all those billions of cells, some little atom of memory is stored and has been residing there for decades. That cell is activated--probably in the Limbic Center--and that old picture and feeling from all that time ago is brought to the forefront of your perception. And think of all the different combinations and mixes of light you see everyday! Trillions. But this specific one somehow activates an old memory.

Wow.

Music is sort of the same deal. Waves of air pressure microscopically move the little cholea (sp?) "hairs" (nerves?") in your inner ear and then that--much like an audio version of the optic nerve--travels to your bain and can activate an old memory sitting there. You can be transported back to a high school party or old girlfriend just from having those certain frequency of air pressure waves enter your ear.

How cool. Our brains rock. Perfected through millions of years. Generations going back so far is each generation was a photo, the stack of photos from you to your homo erectus ancestor would be four miles high!! That number of photos is how many times you would have to say, "My great, great, great, great......"

My head hurts. LOL

 

[ryan]

What reasons suggest that a fictional character does exist? I mean; is anyone on that side of the argument?

My two cents is that a fictional character existed only in the original thought of it. All other thoughts of a fictional character are abstractions. What more needs to be said?

 

[Kharakov]

What reasons suggest that a fictional character does exist? I mean; is anyone on that side of the argument?

I'll be the fish.

Fictional, as in created within human minds, characters exist. Not all of them exist independently of the minds they live within- much like you or I. However, as you don't know for a fact that the universe itself isn't just one giant mind (it might be, but I guarantee you don't know it is), you also don't know that little dream universes which contain bits of natural law universe behaviors, mixed with fancy imaginings, are not real.

One Mind to rule them all, One Mind to find them,
One Mind to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...

Show

the darkness being lack of absolute knowledge of the One Mind, I am a dick, aren't I?

One mind, in demon, with liberty will jest us for all.

Show

the anagram is fer bilby, the last line is a reference to "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all", and you get no results if you google "one mind, in demon, with liberty will jest us for all", and with millions of minds like ours, the likelihood of nobody saying that somewhere google has crawled before is 0, which proves something

 

[Juma]

What reasons suggest that a fictional character does exist? I mean; is anyone on that side of the argument?

My two cents is that a fictional character existed only in the original thought of it. All other thoughts of a fictional character are abstractions. What more needs to be said?

Abstractions exist.

 

[fromderinside]

Abstractions exist.

Resister. A pencil line. The line is real. hmmmmnnnn.

 

[Speakpigeon]

What reasons suggest that a fictional character does exist? I mean; is anyone on that side of the argument?

Sure, yes, I am. A fictional character exists as a... fictional character. QED.

Of course the difficulty is that we cannot say that it exists as some biological structure or process inside a brain so there remains the issue of what kind of existence a fictional character really has.

My two cents is that a fictional character existed only in the original thought of it.

If I think of Santa Claus I guess it won't be the original thought of Santa Claus yet the fictional character I would be thereby thinking of would exist just the same as an idea inside my mind.

All other thoughts of a fictional character are abstractions.

Abstraction of what? Fictional characters are usually not abstraction in any sense. They are not usually meant to represent a category of beings. Each has particular attributes distinguishing it from any abstraction and other fictional characters. Each one is a particular being for the person thinking it.
EB

 

[Togo]

What reasons suggest that a fictional character does exist? I mean; is anyone on that side of the argument?

My two cents is that a fictional character existed only in the original thought of it. All other thoughts of a fictional character are abstractions. What more needs to be said?

The role of context.

My friend Bugsy saw a big guy steal my bike. I suspect that this 'big guy' is someone Bugsy made up. I think he's lying and that the big guy doesn't exist.

I'm suggesting that the big guy doesn't exist, Bugsy is suggesting he does. Clear enough, right?

However, there's a problem here. I made that story up - I don't know anyone called Bugsy. Now, you can claim that fictional characters simply don't exist, and to an extent you'd be right. But you also understood my story, which means you can clearly distinguish between characters that exist and those that don't, within the context of a story. In the context of the story, some of the fictional characters exist, and some do not (Bugsy exists, but 'the big guy' probably doesn't). Outside the context of the story, none of them exist.

The key point is not whether fictional characters exist, but whether it is a logically coherent statement to say that they do. Several philosophers, including Earl Russel, have claimed that a statement to the effect that a fictional character exists, is not even a statement, but an incoherence that doesn't make sense even to the speaker. The fact that you could understand my story, and understand the difference between existent and non-existent fictional characters, suggests that Russel was wrong.

 

[Bronzeage]

This may or may not be relevant to the discussion, but conversations like this thread will never feed the hungry or clothe the poor, so there's no harm in degrading it further.

There is a well known adult oriented social forum which has an incredibly large archive of adult oriented stories. These stories are written by amateur authors and cover a very wide variety of subjects. The categories cover almost every known variation of sexual practice and perversion. There are a few things which will not be accepted or posted. Some things are clear and some things are vague.

For instance, all characters in sexual situations must be adults. This rule is so strict, adult characters cannot reminisce about earlier experiences, and cannot pretend to be younger than they are in their fictional universe. The reasons for this rule are obvious to most people. It's all very clear.

Another category which is not allowed is bestiality. Human characters cannot be in sexual situations with dogs, horses, parakeets, whatever. Maybe.

It is forbidden for a character to have sex with a dog, but only if the character thinks it is a dog. If the dog is actually a demon or an enchanted prince, or simply a talking dog, it's okay. So, the rule is, "You can fantasize about sex with a fantasy dog, but not a real dog."