As long as everyone measured with their arm they are technically right as I understand it. — Cheshire

Well, I do hope neither of us is about to reach for Wikipedia. My point is that any such primitive measuring system is as good an example as any of the potential quandary. Line up the population of the village in order of height. Now, whose arm is the first valid cubit stick? Hence,

And then the puzzle is to specify the smallest (or largest) number of microns that is no longer a cubit. — bongo fury

Which is merely to envisage a radically longer line-up. Because you said microns. Which is fine in principle.

You don't add or subtract length to your arm to meet a standard, so this is incoherent. — Cheshire

How about now, any clearer?

It's the length of your forearm to middle finger. — Cheshire

What is? Presumably not the variance, whose unboundedness I was inquiring into.

So, people don't use tight tolerances for measures with unbounded variances. — Cheshire

Unbounded precisely, i.e. not graph 4; or unbounded ever i.e. graph 2? Or unbounded how? — bongo fury

Did you just mean, people don't use narrow tolerances to measure wide tolerances? But of course engineers do just that, as you seem aware.

It's a novelty — Cheshire

Sure. A 3000 year old novelty.

We'd all produce a different cubit if measured to the micron. — Cheshire

And then the puzzle is to specify the smallest (or largest) number of microns that is no longer a cubit.

We'd all be right relative to our arms and wrong relative to the others. — Cheshire

No, some of us would be obviously right relative to the cubit system, some of us obviously wrong, and some of us neither.

So, people don't use tight tolerances — Cheshire

Narrow tolerances or precise tolerances?

for measures with unbounded variances. — Cheshire

Unbounded precisely, i.e. not graph 4; or unbounded ever i.e. graph 2? Or unbounded how?

Okydoke.

So if epistemicism neither captures people's metasemantic awareness of their own language, — Snakes Alive

because it fails to endorse P2 or offer a substitute...

nor does it seem to describe anything 'objective' in the practice itself, — Snakes Alive

hence the faint mystical glow of the Warburton quote, which I've probably unfairly represented, I must check...

what is its utility as a hypothesis? Are you defending it in any capacity, — Snakes Alive

No.

or just using it as a springboard to talk about the difficulties with vagueness? — Snakes Alive

Yes, which it is good for from my point of view, because it at least endorses P1. It doesn't offer the kind of argument for P1 that would stop people from so carelessly abandoning it, is the shame. On the other hand, we are at least talking in terms of trying to draw a suitable graph of usage.

I could see the proposal to act like it's true, — Snakes Alive

No no no, I never proposed anything of the kind, and I absolutely propose that you carry on doing the opposite :up:

What you seem to be saying now, however, is that epistemicism isn't really true in any sense — Snakes Alive

Except in its support of P1.

it just helps us highlight some features about vague language that are puzzling to us — Snakes Alive

Yes, how to draw a convincing graph of usage.

I think vague language is vague, [...] but that doesn't make it puzzling, — Snakes Alive

It does if you accept any responsibility for the care of P1 as well as P2, and try to apply logic.

Now then...

[1] Tell me, do you construe the word 'heap' as being correctly applied to a single grain?

Surely, though, pretended things aren't so? — Snakes Alive

Is this suddenly a problem?

we all know precisely well what we mean by saying they do or don't exist, and no one is confused. — Snakes Alive

Is your position that we ought to pretend there is a single correct use of a term, — Snakes Alive

No, but in playing or describing the game we ought to respect the cases of correct and incorrect that are clear. We ought not pretend that we are playing chess by moving the bishop non-diagonally, nor that we are speaking English literally by construing the word 'heap' as being correctly applied to a single grain. We ought to pretend instead that the word 'non-heap' applies to or points to or is otherwise connected to a single grain.

, and in the case of vague language, pretend to be epistemicists? — Snakes Alive

No, I think vague language can be described as a game of pretend that tolerates disagreement about what is pretended. The puzzle is how to square the tolerance in some places (P2) with the clarity in others (P1). Epistemicism (a minority view, as its proponents admit) thinks all disagreement is a symptom of error. It says that a proper description of a vague game, if it were possible, would weed out the errors and leave a precise and perfectly consistent game.

But here, as we discuss this now, we presumably aren't pretending — Snakes Alive

We're doing our best to agree enough (pretended) reference to have viable discourse about our actual linguistic behaviour.

so shouldn't we say epistemicism is false? — Snakes Alive

Sure. Not because we aren't pretending (we are) but because the game is better described as tolerating dissent.

But then, I have to admit I fail to see the value in acting like vague language determines precise boundaries. — Snakes Alive

Quite, but the puzzle is to explain how it can have blurred boundaries. How to get from P1 and P2 to P3.

The problem is this is not true. — Snakes Alive

Oh well, if you put it as emphatically as that, with italics and all...

You seem to be hung up on the false idea that a magical barrier exists preventing people from using words in certain ways. — Snakes Alive

I honestly don't know how it seems like that, when I keep mentioning how reference is a game of pretend.

they can even move the bishop non-diagonally – try it yourself... — Snakes Alive

I have. People say, "ok, if you like, but you know it won't be chess?" And this is me, "what makes you think there's any fact of the matter whether what we do is chess?". And they're like, "sorry mate, we only play chess not philosophy."

I accept P1 because I wouldn't apply 'heap' to a single grain. — Snakes Alive

Ok, I'm grateful if someone at least avows P1. We might have a game. Now, bearing in mind,

it is a matter of arbitrary decision whether we choose to apply the word 'heap' or not, and so construe it as correctly applied or not — Snakes Alive

... Let's try.

[1] Tell me, do you construe the word 'heap' as being correctly applied to a single grain?

You seem to think that because 'heap' has some property preventing it from being applied to a single grain, therefore P1 is true because people 'can't' apply it to a single grain. — Snakes Alive

Well, whether or not I ever lapse into magical thinking, and I'm only human after all, I would indeed tend to offer scare quotes around can't, and be ready to clarify, as I keep doing, that either of us doing what they 'can't' merely prevents us from agreeing that the game is indeed 'chess', or 'spoken English' or whatever. Which is usually a game-stopper. (Which may or may not be good for the quality of the game as generally played.)

But you've got it backwards. — Snakes Alive

Surely there's no back or front? If we're not thinking magically or essentially?

It's because people don't use 'heap' for a single grain that P1 is true. — Snakes Alive

Ok, if you prefer. Although I preferred your more symmetrical "material equivalence", earlier. What I really like here is "people"...

We could turn around and decide to start applying it to a single grain, if we wanted to, and declare P1 false as a result. — Snakes Alive

My emphasis, for the same reason, that you are on the verge of recognising a general rather than personal proscription against the application, such that reversing it in a collective endeavour might create a new and different game with the same word. (Where P1 was indeed false.)

I just wouldn't want to, — Snakes Alive

Ah, rats.

Still...

[1] Tell me, do you construe the word 'heap' as being correctly applied to a single grain?

Of course, I would not reject P1, because I think using 'heap' in such a non-standard way is pointless and confusing. — Snakes Alive

Well of course, I would not reject a statement to the effect that a bishop can't move directly forwards, because I think using it in such a non-standard way is pointless and confusing. However...

All these things are a matter of adjudication. You could choose to use a word in a highly nonstandard way, and people could go along with it – but they often won't, and they'll be more unwilling to, the farther you move away from an established usage. But if you decide to use 'heap' to refer to a single grain too, then sure, go ahead, that's also a pattern of usage that could be established. It would be 'incorrect' in virtue of some prior pattern of established usage, but so what? Patterns of usage can be re-negotiated as well. — Snakes Alive

But I'm guessing you don't offer the same advice in regards to the chess move? Because it wouldn't be chess? Well I, like any dictionary compiler or competent speaker, take the same view of the single grain, that it's well outside of the range of correct application of 'heap', in ordinary English as spoken literally. (As opposed to metaphorically.)

This is a matter of how to apply the word, not an interesting inquiry either into the nature of language, or the nature of sand and piles of it. — Snakes Alive

But how to apply the word is interesting and puzzling and inquires into the nature of language because, unlike in chess, the rules are flexible at the same time as they are strict. They can be bent, but not too far, and obviously how far is the puzzle.

So, you do reject P1 with respect to general usage, in English, of the word 'heap'. I accept that you accept P1 with respect to your own usage. Your personal threshold is perhaps much further along than one. But you appear happy to acknowledge that usage as a whole allows for literal application of the term to a single grain. A linguist or dictionary compiler may beg to differ. They would offer a single grain as an obvious example of incorrect usage, or opposite meaning.

The epistemicist, in appealing to a strict notion of 'correct usage,' is invoking a kind of magical view of language. — Snakes Alive

Wasn't it clear we agree about this?

to say a word has a meaning is no more and no less than to say the word has certain causal powers in virtue of a community of speakers coordinating to use it in a certain way. — Snakes Alive

But isn't that verging on a kind of magical thinking? You'll never cash out those causal powers at the level of linguistic analysis. (Chomsky's famous ridicule of "the probability of a sentence".) Better to describe the (pretended, sure) relations and rules and moves of the game.

When someone says a certain usage is correct, they might either mean: (i) as a descriptive matter, this is how people tend to use the term, as summed up by some statistical measure (based on prior usage or an inference about disposition to future usage, or whatever), — Snakes Alive

Graphs 1 and 2.

or (ii) as a normative matter, that some use is to be singled out as to how the word is to be used. — Snakes Alive

Graphs 3 and 4.

But neither of these are descriptive facts about words having meaning as if that were something else beside how people use a word. — Snakes Alive

Yes, and we don't want them to be, but, we do want the first (1&2) to better acknowledge where a line of acceptable usage (however blurred) has been crossed, and the second (3&4) to better show how the line is both created and blurred by use.

I.e., we want P1, and we want P2.

The grain doesn't transform a non-heap into a heap. An assertion without negation does. — Cheshire

I kind of agree. Does it matter who asserts and who negates? Are you equating 'heap' with 'allegedly a heap' or with 'unanimously a heap'? (Or both or neither, or something else.)

And do I take it that you disagree with the epistemicist position, that if we each recognise said threshold at different places then fewer than two of us will be correct? — bongo fury

The epistemicist has the 'atomic number' model of metasemantics, — Snakes Alive

Agreed. It's partly because they insist on a distinction between

whether we choose to apply the word 'heap' or not, and so construe it as correctly applied or not — Snakes Alive

and whether the word is correctly applied or not.

The first question suggests a possible poll of personal thresholds likely to exhibit a bell curve when plotting popularity of threshold against grain-number:



Or, roughly equivalently, an 'ogive' or half bell curve rising from next to nothing at a single grain and levelling out to a plateau at about, maybe, who knows, a few thousand. This might represent the distribution of actual applications of the word in ordinary discourse.



Whereas, the second question is envisaged by epistemicism as an underlying fact of the matter, albeit the linguistic matter, such that an appropriate graph would extend horizontally at a height of zero, then step suddenly up to 1 at the correct threshold, and continue horizontally.






Which I think we both reject, but is what is being defended here:

Like the children we make, the meanings we make can have secrets from us. — Nigel Warburton, aeon article

Happily, probably everyone agrees with

something is a heap iff the word 'heap' is correctly applied to it, 'iff' being read as material equivalence). — Snakes Alive

The controversy is over whether to distinguish between 'applied' (and so construed as correctly applying) and 'correctly applied'. Whether there are any incorrect applications (and construals).

Now, I wonder if you will approve of any of these suggested clarifications? I should have thought you might have reservations.

I certainly do. Ridiculous as I find the 'hidden step', I think that ordinary usage deserves some kind of recognition of its ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect, in some way that doesn't fizzle out to 'relatively correct'. Usage can sometimes be a matter for negotiation, and adjudication, but sometimes not. We know that anything black is an obvious counter-example to white, and is therefore anything but minimally white, and similarly for off and on, bald and hairy, etc.

Hence my readiness to restart, and invite you to consider an absolutist position on a single grain. E.g.,

[1] Tell me, do you think that whether a single grain can be correctly called a heap in common English is a matter for negotiation or adjudication in context?

I appreciate fully that you may well see no need at all to deny that proposition. (I'll have to bluster that you don't speak English, but never mind!) But if that's because you have embraced anything like the half bell curve as a picture of usage (or of fuzzy truth), then notice that you are, after all, ditching P1 and not P2.

one is often at liberty to say that the addition of a single grain creates a heap where there was none before. — Snakes Alive

And do I take it that you disagree with the epistemicist position, that if we each recognise said threshold at different places then fewer than two of us will be correct?

Behind you!!

Ok, I didn't realize this was the format. — Cheshire

Of course it could just as easily start from P2 and P3, asking how you can possibly go bald one hair at a time, etc.

If you tell me heaps exist then you can prove the existence of a heap through some criteria. — Cheshire

I wasn't trying to prove anything. Only to look for examples we can agree on. I don't see the relevance of criteria. Unless you want to say, being a billion grain collection is a criterion, or a sufficient condition. Fine. Bring it on board. How does it help?

Where do I send the invoice? — Cheshire

Reminds me of when my bank operated a no-charge policy for "small" overdrafts...

If premise 3 is true it implies criteria for a heap exists. — Cheshire

You lost me. What exactly do we need to agree is implied by

P3. heaps exist — bongo fury

?

I take it to mean, simply, that there are some heaps.

Not that we need to straight away consider examples, but I'd offer, say, any billion-grain collection. Premise 1, on the other hand, does refer to an alleged counter-example.

But, none of this addresses a paradox. — Cheshire

The puzzle, it should be clear, is how to reach P3, or avoid denying it, while accepting both P1 and P2.

It's asking how not when. — Cheshire

Well, if by 'it' you mean player 1's second line, then yes, ok, the 'signal' of a subsequent question perhaps isn't as strong as all that.

You can say that you think it must happen at some point (some grain) but you aren't prepared to say which.

(P3, though?? It hasn't even been put as a question as yet.)

In that case, are you with the epistemicist in supposing an unknowable answer to the numerical question?

I suspect not, and that you imagine it happening at different points (grain numbers) on different occasions of flow. But then you can't blame me for wondering,

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat ever amounts to a heap, for any rate of flow?

I.e. whether you have any respect for P1. Or are, like many people, of the opinion that black is minimally white, off is minimally on, etc.

The question doesn't ask for a tipping point, — Cheshire

Which question? Player 1's second line here?

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] No, absolutely not.
[1] And tell me, do you think that adding a single grain could ever turn a non-heap into a heap?

This question clearly enough signals that the next one may be "which grain?", although a popular version of the game proceeds grain by grain, with the same result, i.e. that you need to be able to answer the question of which grain.

but rather the method of transformation. — Cheshire

Which question asks such a thing?

Ok. And does assuming a rate of flow perhaps render the tipping point unknowable, as per epistemicism?

Or does it imply a range of possible tipping points, and hence a restart of the game as just described?

"Guard this heap with your life"; seems silly — Cheshire

Really? A heap of diamonds? Or (in bad taste but logical enough) of donor kidneys? Are they not suitable for the order?

People are instructed on how to define something they intuitively understand? — Cheshire

Challenged at least to either reject or reform at least one of three intuitively acceptable but evidently incompatible premises, or else the standard logic by which they may be combined.

Yes... and the collective pronoun is a paucity of donor kidneys. — Tom Storm

Thank you, with your permission I'll use 'paucity' along with 'pittance' to expound my antonym-based constructive solution.

Bald and hairy, black and white, on and off, heap and whatever its potential antonym (pittance?)... they all operate perfectly well as alphabets (or conceptual schemes) of two characters (concepts) separated by a comfortable no-mans-land. The puzzle is how to look closely at that without it reverting [...] to a mere spectrum. — bongo fury

Proposed solution here.

The demand that there be an exact criterion determining what is or is not a heap comes from a mistaken metasemantics – the assumption is that ... — Snakes Alive

Yes, yes.

Yes, but the premises, that we are obliged to reject or reform at least one of, are, rather:

P1. a single grain is clearly not a heap

P2. adding a single grain can never turn a non-heap into a heap

P3. heaps exist

Please clarify which, or how. — bongo fury

I.e. can you play the game, or is it beneath you? Ah good:

As to the Sorities Paradox, it is Premise 2 that is false – one is often at liberty to say that the addition of a single grain creates a heap where there was none before. — Snakes Alive

Absolutely. However,

The delightful thing about the sorites is that it can spring up again from the rubble... — Bongo Fury

Or

sorites reasoning, [...] like a virus, will tend to evolve a resistant strain. — R.M. Sainsbury, Concepts without boundaries

E.g.

the semantics which concern the precise moment when an actual heap of sand is considered to be mere grains of sand, isn't linguistically specified a priori but is decided by speakers on a case specific basis.
— sime

Agreed. But what is the smallest number of grains that would need considering by speakers as a particular case? Is it 1? — bongo fury

I.e.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a competent speaker of English can ever call a particular case of a single grain a heap?

Which might or might not get traction. I for one am inclined to reply,

[2] No, I think that any single grain is far enough away from being a heap in ordinary language as to make it an obvious case of a non-heap, for any competent speaker.

But if you, on the other hand, prefer

[2] Well, certainly, a single grain is simply the least in a series of cases ordered according to the acceptability of 'heap' as an English descriptor.

... then of course, game over.

We might agree, in passing, that your rejection of P2 has not, as an epistemicist's might well have done, survived into the new round of the game. You have ditched P1, after all. A single grain is a minimal heap. Black is minimally white. Etc.

A heap denotes a number of things. — Cheshire

It has distinguishable senses, like all sorts of words. The puzzle as usually conducted inspires (often) recognition of a sense agreed for the game. With clear examples and counter-examples, and an implication of some kind of boundary. What kind being the puzzle.

Out of respect for the victims of some disaster? Ok. But not for any reason relevant to the puzzle.

But why shouldn't we use terms that are imprecise? — Banno

I already replied to this.

The interesting (and paradoxical) thing is that the clarity is so easily achieved, — bongo fury

It's obvious you only skim, all the time. Never mind.

obviously it's a puzzle if we accept also the premise that calling a single grain a heap is absurd. If calling it a heap is tolerable then, as I keep saying, no puzzle.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

Game over. — bongo fury

The latter way of avoiding play is to reject

P1. a single grain is clearly not a heap — bongo fury

For better or worse. No reform, just bite the bullet of the contrary premise, "everything is a spectrum".

From this point of view, the converse way of avoiding play is to baldly reject, and bite the bullet which is contrary to,

P2. adding a single grain can never turn a non-heap into a heap — bongo fury

Obviously there is a puzzle if we accept P2 (in addition to P1). Whereas, if such a sudden transition is not absurd but tolerable, then, as I would in that case very likely keep saying, no puzzle.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] No, absolutely not.
[1] And tell me, do you think that adding a single grain could ever turn a non-heap into a heap?
[2] Well, certainly it could, it's just that, for somewhat technical reasons, we can probably never discover which grain that is.

This second way of spoiling the game at the outset is what the OP is (I expect) referring to as 'epistemicism'. Just thought I'd sketch (or caricature) it out.

Although language is a human construct, — Nigel Warburton, aeon article

So far so reasonable...

that does not make it transparent to us. — Nigel Warburton, aeon article

Well yeah but that surely doesn't mean there's anything definite there, for us to see or fail to see, does it?

Like the children we make, the meanings we make can have secrets from us. — Nigel Warburton, aeon article

Woah. What just happened. Provocation? Fair enough then. Nice.

There is no puzzle. — Michael

obviously it's a puzzle if we accept also the premise that calling a single grain a heap is absurd. If calling it a heap is tolerable then, as I keep saying, no puzzle.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

Game over. — bongo fury

Less interesting, but correct. — Michael

Yes. Lazy. Assuming straw men.

This doesn't show some paradox about the metaphysics of identity or whatever — Michael

What, like essentialism? Who brought that up?

A language that doesn't have a word comparable to "heap" doesn't "fail" to refer to some "real" identity inherent in — Michael

Enough metaphysics! Solve the puzzle.

The implicit premise is "if P1) a single grain is clearly not a heap and P2) adding a single grain can never turn a non-heap into a heap then C) heaps can't exist". — Michael

No, that's implicit logic. Requiring iteration of the usual, implied, kind. "Step by step". Grain by grain. Or recursion. But not another premise.

However this implicit (essentialist) premise is false. The existence of heaps does not depend on there being a specific number of grains that qualifies a collection as a heap. — Michael

That's not what you just called an implicit premise. And all it amounts to is incredulity at the conjunction of the premises with C. (= P3.) Fine. That's what people are generally content to call paradox. A worthy game. A demonstration that apparently innocuous premises are incompatible and need reform.

You have a hunch that my P2 hides essentialist dogma. Fine. Perhaps that enables you to suggest a suitable reform? "Nothing to see here folks" is less interesting.

And there's no specific generation where a proto-human gave birth to a human. Would you say that there's a paradox of speciation? — Michael

Another good example.

And another.

There's no contradiction or paradox there. — Michael

I don't understand. Are you saying they are, all 3, compatible, as they stand and appear to signify?

There is, however, perhaps implicit in the argument that to become a heap there must be a point at which adding a single grain "turns it into" a heap, but that would be essentialism which ought be rejected. — Michael

Garbled? What are you saying might perhaps be implicit in what?

There are good piano players and bad piano players, but you can't look at someone's progress from bad piano player to good piano player and point to a specific instant where they "became" good. — Michael

Yes, this is the paradox? If parsed into a plausible set of premises, and subjected to logical iteration? You are familiar with how this is generally done?

There's only a "paradox" if you insist on the truth of contradictory premises — Michael

Yes, but the premises, that we are obliged to reject or reform at least one of, are, rather:

P1. a single grain is clearly not a heap

P2. adding a single grain can never turn a non-heap into a heap

P3. heaps exist

Please clarify which, or how.

Well, no, there is no paradox. — Banno

If only.

An excess of precision impairs our actions.

And precision is available, as required. — Banno

Likewise,

Why is linguistic imprecision a problem? "Heap" trades referential precision for flexibility, whilst retaining the necessary semantics for useful, albeit less precise communication. — sime

However,

obviously it's a puzzle if we accept also the premise that calling a single grain a heap is absurd. If calling it a heap is tolerable then, as I keep saying, no puzzle.

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

Game over. — bongo fury

But,

The interesting (and paradoxical) thing is that the clarity is so easily achieved, by choosing obvious counter-examples. Which is what the sorites puzzle reminds us of. Occasionally. When it pumps absolutist zeal, so that the game gets started:

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] No of course not, and I know I'm a long way from the smallest number of grains that could possibly be the smallest heap! Far enough that a single grain is an obvious case of a non-heap!

Of course, later on, the same player may feel differently...

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is a heap?
[2] Well, certainly, it's the very smallest size of heap.

Game over. People often finish up claiming 2 had been their position all along. Perhaps it should have been, and the puzzle is a fraud. — bongo fury

The puzzle is how to avoid arriving at that position [assuming we are indeed determined not to], without denying the validity of any one step along the way. — bongo fury

what can one say about this problem of the valence of what a "heap" actually is. — Shawn

According to me, and contra epistemicism, that it's a voting matter: but not a free vote. So there are three cases: unanimously and obviously a non-heap (e.g. a single grain, otherwise you aren't a semantically competent speaker), controversially a heap, and unanimously a heap (e.g. a million grains). Of course, you may want to throw that back at me, and restart the puzzle:

[1] Tell me, do you think that a single grain of wheat is even vote-ably a heap?

I would hope so.

The delightful thing about the sorites is that it can spring up again from the rubble... — Don Wade

It's fallible, because it needs two opposing intuitions.

Where it leads me is here, if you're interested.

slowly and carefully... — Banno

No comment.

The existence of Pegasus is taken as granted in setting up a discussion of Pegasus. — Banno

Neither slow nor careful.

we all know precisely well what we mean by saying they do or don't exist, and no one is confused. — Snakes Alive

Right, no need for Quine to write On What There Is, then.

The problems only come in when we try to formalize languages talking about these things — Snakes Alive

Hard to see how you got that impression. Quine very deftly traces the problem to ancient puzzles of ordinary language.

I tend to think the issue was definitively settled by the Lewisian analysis from the 70s that made use of Kripkean modal logics, — Snakes Alive

Ok ...

I can't see anything useful in your comment. — Banno

I know.

That doesn't imply that we have two sorts of existence, but that existence can be used for different cases. — Banno

Different cases? Clearly not. Different treatments of the same case. Different senses of "exist". Different sorts.

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. — 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.

Did someone claim it did? — Banno

There are no fictive folk? — Banno

Okydoke.

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?

You seem to be denying that existential generalisation applies to fiction. — Banno

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.

So, talking about historical or literary facts about Pegasus, isn't as misleading as stating that Pegasus both exists and doesn't. — Shawn

So, to avoid contradiction, you will refrain from denying that 'Pegasus' refers?

A flying horse or species? — Cheshire

No difference. — bongo fury

Two words will suffice: 'real' and 'exists'; — 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,

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. — bongo fury

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. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, although it's useful to avoid confusing use and mention, as Elgin explains, above.

But is there, in all of Heaven and Earth, a domain of Lord of the Rings, containing hobbits? — bongo fury

There are no fictive folk? — Banno

Literally, obviously not. Don't you care to describe fictive language-use literally?

Mention-selection is one way.

OK, then: who does this? — Banno

A subtler opponent than the believer in fictive entities.

No difference. Not a slip. But if you like,

An example is the disagreement among Shakespearean scholars as to whether the Falstaff of The Merry Wives of Windsor is the same as the Falstaff who appears in Henry IV. The disagreement is to be resolved by deciding what limits a system for describing the plays places on the application of 'Falstaff-description'. — Elgin, With Reference to Reference

I know you won't accept that 'horse' denotes horses, but...

Occasionally someone suggests that although 'horse' denotes horses, 'unicorn' denotes portions of unicorn stories. This thesis is untenable, for it rests on a confusion of use and mention. When 'unicorn' is applied to such stories it is applied mention-selectively. It singles out the words and phrases in the story that are unicorn-mentions. When applied denotively (hence, used), it denotes nothing. For among the world's fauna no unicorns are to be found. Indeed, were the thesis correct, a sentence like 'There are no such things as unicorns' would be not only false, but self-defeating. For the sentence itself contains a unicorn-mention which, according to the proposal, is what the term 'unicorn' denotes.

Fictive terms do not, of course, appear exclusively in works of fiction. It was noted above that fictive terms whose origin is in works of fiction also appear in works about fiction. This use of fictive terms is parasitic on their original use, for the ways they are originally used in fiction constrain the ways their replicas may be used in works about fiction. In addition, fictive terms are applied metaphorically in a number of contexts. Discussion of this use of fictive terms must, however, be postponed until an account of metaphor has been presented. There is yet another use of fictive terms. They are employed in factual works whose subject matter, unlike that of literary history or criticism, is not fiction. In particular, I am concerned here with the use of fictive terms in the sciences. Scientists use such terms as 'a perfect vacuum', 'an ideal gas', 'a free market', despite the widespread recognition that there are, properly speaking, no perfect vacuums, ideal gases, or free markets. These expressions function not denotively, but mention-selectively. — Elgin, With Reference to Reference

Then provide your explanation. — Banno

Goodman's very neat solution is then to read "images of characters" e.g. "picture of Pickwick" not as requiring two separate denotata, a picture and a Pickwick, but as long (if only slightly) for "Pickwick-picture", a one-place predicate applying to a certain sub-class of pictures. — bongo fury

You are pretending that words have meanings — Banno

Only in a manner of speaking.

that its usual meaning [use] is other than it is: which is [to imply] that — bongo fury