They're both real in their respective frameworks — frank
You would somehow distinguish between a person who read LOTR as a novel, and someone who thought it was true. What is that distinction and how does it affect the truth-value of statements like "Frodo carried the ring to Mordor"? — Srap Tasmaner
Both "Frodo" and "George" are expressions. They're both real in their respective frameworks, Frodo being a real Hobbit in LOTR, as opposed to a bad dream Gandalf had. — frank
No, I'm saying that the form of the proposition expressed by "Frodo went to Mordor" is different from the form of the proposition expressed by "George Washington crossed the Delaware." — Srap Tasmaner
As someone who finds this discussion somewhat lifeless, can you tell me why this matters? What are the practical consequences or implications of 'real' being used in these different ways? — Tom Storm
My issue with some of this is we are often not in a position to know what is real about the real. With Washington, for instance, we have that well known 'chopping down of the cherry tree' story, which turns out to be as fictional as Frodo going to Mordor. How far does 'real' get us? — Tom Storm
Real" is mostly an honorific according to Chomsky.
— frank
Which is curious given his certainty about truth - right and wrong - in geopolitics. — Tom Storm
Again, why we can't use sentences as truthbearers. — frank
It is really about what happens in the story whether it is fictitious or not. — Amity
I would say that sentences in fiction communicate truths — Amity
Another kind of truth about reality can be found in the likes of Charles Dickens.
In contrast to a fictional truth, this might be termed a 'genuine' truth. His stories present moral or political truths some readers can relate to. — Amity
Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.
What shall we say about that?
— Srap Tasmaner
I bolded your question to which I attempted a response. Still waiting for your reply — Amity
You read a story by Chekhov or Raymond Carver -- if you're a teenager in a crappy English class, you just say wtf? But if you're an adult with some experience, some curiosity about the world, some sensitivity maybe?, you might reflect on the story and on the lives we lead and have something like insight. The truth you find is not stated in what you read. — Srap Tasmaner
Some of this is just Moore thumbing her nose at the poetry-reading public, oddly, because she was famous for including snippets of newspaper and magazine articles in her poems. She was the oddest of ducks. — Srap Tasmaner
“literalists of
the imagination” — poets.org, first published 1919
It's the spirit in which Seamus Heaney said poetry shows us "a glimpsed alternative," and Geoffrey Hill said a poem must be "a fortress of the imagination." Creative, imaginative thinking ought to be contagious, just as rigorous thought ought to be, as when Wittgenstein said, "I should not wish to have spared anyone the trouble of thinking." — Srap Tasmaner
Now consider what makes "Frodo went to Mordor" true, if it is: there is a sentence or sentences in the book written by Tolkien which say or imply that Frodo went to Mordor. Whether those sentences are part of the book determines its truth-value, if it has one, not the sequential locations of any person. — Srap Tasmaner
We agree he doesn't exist. But you want to still be able truly to predicate "is a hobbit" of him; I don't. — Srap Tasmaner
(As if the entire text of Lord of the Rings were but one proper name.)Quine says that quotation"...has a certain anomalous feature"" — Quotation
'real' in this general sense is 'member of a non-empty class'. — Srap Tasmaner
possible worlds — Banno
semantics — Banno
If the real is so elusive, so difficult to establish, then many of us will continue to be seduced by the glib certainties of extremists, carpetbaggers, shills and sophists.
On the right-hand side, we want to take the in-world perspective, and leverage that to define a term in our world, on the left-hand side. In Middle Earth, we want to say, Frodo is a person; in our world, he's a fictional character. Is this the same 'entity' we're talking about? Has it a dual existence, in one 'world' as one sort of thing and in ours as another? Is this no different from saying that chocolate can exist as something yummy for one person and something repulsive for another? — Srap Tasmaner
I have very strong doubts that stories count as possible worlds. — Srap Tasmaner
I don't see how to avoid semantic issues — Srap Tasmaner
and that hence one best explicates talk of what is real by making clear what isn't real, and vice versa. Would you care to comment on this, in the light of our further conversation?What is real and what isn't is decided in each case by contrast; there is no single criteria. — Banno
There are some interesting lines we could take from Tree and Leaf, which I haven't read since early adulthood, but which was somewhat influential at the time. The heart of Tolkien's writing is that, as he writes in the preface to Rings, the tale grows in the telling. The tree has many branches, so we might wonder if there were Istari in the second age; Tolkien says no, but Amazon apparently says yes. Different branches? Does Tolkien have precedence? To say so seems to go against the tale growing in the telling. All this by way of showing that authorship does not perhaps quite grant the authority you claim. Isn't there stuff in more recent post modern writings about the text becoming free of the author on publication? The authority of author's meaning isn't what it was. — Banno
[...] The concept of fiction gives rise to a number of intriguing and complex philosophical issues, and the philosophy of fiction has now become an acknowledged part of mainstream philosophy, with a history that goes back at least to the early debates about the role of poets and dramatists found in the works of Aristotle and Plato. The issues in question broadly relate to fiction as a mode of representation—a way of describing individuals and events—that is strikingly different from representation concerned with truth, the latter long a dominant theme in philosophy. Not only is faithfulness to truth in the ordinary sense not a requirement in fiction; fiction may even depart from truth in the things it talks about, which typically include nonexistent individuals and even members of nonexistent kinds (Holmes and hobbits, for example)—see the entry on fictional entities.
[...]
The problem of saying how fiction differs from non-fiction is just one of the hard problems faced by the philosophical study of fiction. Another problem is that of specifying the sense in which a fictional sentence can be true despite misdescribing how matters stand in the world. (A sentence like “Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective”, for example, is not true if it is construed as a claim about brilliant detectives our world has known, but counts as true if it is stated as an answer to a quiz question “Who was Sherlock Holmes?” By contrast, “Sherlock Holmes was a plodding policeman” would count as false in this context.) But in what sense can the sentence be true, given that the world does not contain any such person as Sherlock Holmes? One promising thought is that when we hear the sentence as genuinely true we regard it as elliptical for something like “In the Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective”. On this suggestion it is the truth of the latter prefixed sentence that provides the sense in which “Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective” counts as true. But even if this is right, what still needs explaining is what it is for such a prefixed sentence to be true. What makes “In the Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective” true (but not “In the Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes was a plodding policeman”), when there never was such a person as Sherlock Holmes? In addition to the problem of how to understand the notion of truth in a work of fiction, there is also a deep puzzle about the way we respond emotionally to such truths. When we engage with fiction, we often do so at a highly specific emotional level—we may not only be enthralled by elements of the plot but also affected by what befalls particular characters. Thus, we may find ourselves feeling pity for Anna Karenina as we near the end of Tolstoy’s novel because we are aware of Anna’s suffering. But the claim that we pity Anna Karenina is deeply puzzling: we know there is no Anna Karenina, and that it is only true in Tolstoy’s novel that Anna Karenina is suffering, so how can there be genuine pity for Anna? This is the so-called paradox of fiction, one of a batch of puzzles that have been raised in the philosophy of fiction about our engagement with works of fiction. These are by no means the only philosophical questions thrown up by fiction. In fact, the paradox of fiction immediately suggests others... — Fiction - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) -
But Banno is, so far as I observe, confusing the referent of "Frodo" in the real sense with the referent of "Frodo" in the Ryle sense. — bongo fury
What's certainly not the case is that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is to do with quotation, as ↪bongo fury seems to think. — Banno
I refer him to Davidson's landmark dismissal of Quine's account of quotation, with
Quine says that quotation"...has a certain anomalous feature""
— Quotation — Banno
Quine says that quotation "...has a certain anomalous feature"
(As if the entire text of Lord of the Rings were but one proper name.) — Banno
I was alleging that your reasoning about fiction and nonfiction is spoilt by your not bothering to distinguish use and mention, nor follow the usual guidance of quote marks for that purpose. — bongo fury
Set your criticism out. — Banno
I suspect that in this case you failed to see I was using quote marks to clarify reference to -F-r-o-d-o- tokens, and then to talk about the supposed referent of such tokens. Not caring for the niceties of use and mention, you might well have taken my -"-F-r-o-d-o-"- tokens to refer to one or more -"-F-r-o-d-o-"- tokens, and then supposed that I was talking about the referent of these: i.e. -F-r-o-d-o- tokens. Had that been an appropriate reading, I would indeed have been talking about the mechanics of quotation. But I was using quotation, to attempt clarity (god help me). Not mentioning it. — bongo fury
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