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"Paul Holbach" <paulholbachDELETETHENAME@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> Paul Holbach wrote:
>
>> There is no such fact as Sherlock Holmes's living in 221B Baker Street.
>> The only facts there are are that /it is written/ that Holmes lives in
>> Baker Street and that /it is not written/ that Holmes lives in Sloane
>> Street.
>> Of course, you could call Sherlock Holmes's living in 221B Baker Street
>> a fictional fact or a pseudo-fact - but not a fact.
>> There simply are no discoverable facts concerning nonexistents.
>
> In other words, we /represent/ or /characterize/ Sherlock Holmes as a
> detective living in 221B Baker Street, but in fact Sherlock Holmes /is
> not/ a detective living in 221B Baker Street.
I am not sure how far I want to push the following argument, but let's
see where it goes. Let me state at the outset: I'm not an expert on
the logic or use of fictionals. This is an interesting subject, but
not one I've pursued.
That Holmes lives on Baker Street is a fact of convention. We agree,
I suppose, that Doyle is an authority on Holmes and thus we defer to
what he writes. In a similar fashion, we have certain conventions on
the meanings of "1", "+", "=" and "2" and thus it is indeed a fact
that 1 + 1 = 2.
The status of facts about fictional entities is exactly analogous to
facts about mathematical entities (and other entities defined by
convention--which might be *every* entity according to some
theories). The difference is primarily in the nature of the
"axioms". We take it that everything the author wrote about a
character is true[1]. We may make deductions from these facts, such
as "Holmes is not the oldest child in his family". And so on.
Footnotes:
[1] There may, of course, be interesting exceptions to this rule!
For instance, Doyle (in the voice of Watson) may omit salacious
details out of respect for his friend.
--
Jesse F. Hughes
"I'm better than you, and you know it."
-- James Harris
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