tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21308815.post6349407903993095354..comments2023-10-08T15:51:17.426+00:00Comments on Beyond Necessity: Fictional objectsEdward Ockhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07583379503310147119noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21308815.post-84475627062779454722008-06-05T18:01:00.000+00:002008-06-05T18:01:00.000+00:00A good and Brandonesque objection there, Brandon. ...A good and Brandonesque objection there, Brandon. Well, the claim seems to be that fictional statements (as opposed to merely false ones) 'bestow' properties on fictional objects. Thus, as I've pointed out elsewhere, fictional statements have to be true. A statement that A is B 'bestows' B upon the fictional A, so A now has B, and the statement 'A is B' is true as a result. <BR/><BR/>This raises the question of when the fictional A begins to exist. I suppose it could coherently be held that A always existed, because the author was going to write about A, but that doesn't altogether make sense. What if the world were to turn out otherwise? What happens to the fictional object in a possible world where no one wrote about 'it'? <BR/><BR/>More plausible (plausibility being relative) is that the fictional object is created just as soon as I talk or write about it. It doesn't possess any properties until I 'bestow' them by making the fictional claim. So why shouldn't we suppose that the existence of the object is also bestowed at the point of writing. Another argument for this is that it is absurd for the the object to exist before it has any properties 'bestowed' upon it, so that there exists an object without any properties whatsoever (except perhaps of existence). Another problem is that this view requires existence being a property, so does it possess this property before the author has said that exists, i.e. bestows existence upon it?<BR/><BR/>I have many more questions like these.Edward Ockhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07583379503310147119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21308815.post-84080493173945193942008-05-30T21:43:00.000+00:002008-05-30T21:43:00.000+00:00Does writing this miraculously create a fictional ...<I>Does writing this miraculously create a fictional object the size of Jupiter? </I><BR/><BR/>That's not really what's being claimed, as far as I can see; the question actually should be "Does this describe a fictional miraculously created object the size of Jupiter?"Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.com