Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 2:14 pm
Again, my point is the answer depends on the criteria, in this case the criteria you use to categorise 'exist' . The answer depending on the criteria (we create) is a point I keep making and I don't think you've answered, hence it's an exercise in categorisation, rather than elucidation. If you're asking is Holmes a concrete entity located in the world, then no, he's not - because he's a fictional character! The most elucidating answer to your question, imo, is that Holmes exists as mental experiences only.
* Even if Sherlock Holmes existed as an abstract entity lacking a spatial location, he would exist in the same sense of "to exist" as Donald Trump, who is a concrete entity with a spatial location.
OK, give me your preferred definition/criteria for 'exist', and I'll try to file Holmes appropriately under said definition - because as I keep saying, that's all I see going on here. Something you've repeatedly avoided responding to.
* It doesn't make sense to say that "Holmes exists as mental experiences only." First of all, all (tokens) of experiences are concrete entities with a spatial location in animal nervous systems, which contradicts your above denial of Holmes' concreteness.
Well that's one theory of consciousness, Identity Theory, which as you know I address later, when I say this answer applies unless mental experience and brain processes are the exact same thing. In other words, I addressed this point.
What kind of experience do you think is Holmes: a sensation, an emotion, an imagination (thought)? Anyway, there are many different experiences in many different minds/brains, and Holmes as one thing cannot be identical to many different things.
Right, Holmes can be all kinds of mental experiences, in different minds, or the same mind at different times, a point I make myself. If it doesn't happen to fit the labels on your chosen box, that doesn't change the fact of the matter, it just means your categories don't fully capture the actual state of affairs. Problematic for the 'philospher room' , right? But only if you prioritise your categorisation system over elucidation - which is again a point I keep making.
There is another crucial distinction between the content of thought/imagination and its (intentional) object. The (mind-internal) content of thoughts about Sherlock Holmes is constituted by mental representations of him, but the content isn't the (mind-external) object of thought. When I think about him, I use but don't think about mental representations of him. It's one thing to think about Sherlock Holmes and another to think about images or ideas of him.
We could discuss the finer points of these ideas, but my point is categorising as Real/Unreal, A or B, is an inappropriately blunt instrument for doing so. So to prioritise the categorising does a disservice to the complexity of the actual state of affairs. And a significant aspect of the state of affairs here, philosophy of mind, is not settled. Tho it is much more interesting and significant.
Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 7:14 pm
If we discover mental experiences are identical to brain processes, then Holmes exists in the world as physical brain processes. And that would be a sound justification for creating a new framing of ontology, and new language to accompany it, because we'd discovered something new about the nature of reality. So we might call that fictional character 'neuro-Holmes', or somesuch, and 'neuro-Conan Doyle' would represent thoughts of Conan Doyle, but the pre-fix wouldn't in itself entail mind independence. And of course my thoughts-brain patterns and yours would be different, and change from moment to moment, so these terms would carry those implications.
Again, the point is that no name of a fictional character refers to a brain process, because no such name refers to a mental/neural representation of a fictional character. If Sherlock Holmes existed, he surely wouldn't "exist[.] in the world as physical brain processes." Anyway, which brain process in whose brain would Holmes be? As I already said, one thing cannot be identical to many different things.
As the quote you're replying to says, if we settled that mental experience is the exact same thing as brain processes (patterns of neurons exchanging chemicals and so on), then it strikes me that having learned something new about the nature of the relationship between the physical and mental, we might want to amend our ontological discourse to reflect that. Rather than see how we could jam the new square peg into one of the two old round holes. And, as I said, it would be sensible to reflect the actual state of affairs, rather than cling to the old framing, so the new framing would hopefully reflect the fact that mental experience about a subject happens in different ways in different people, and the same people from moment to moment. Whether it's an apple you and I look at, or thinking about Holmes, that's the nature of mental experience. And that's how people mentally experience Sherlock Holmes.
Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 7:14 pm
And incidentally, identifying existing objects physically located in the world is itself a rather out-dated and problematic framing of what's real. Take a solid, square table, if that is actually an assemblage of tiny vibrating parts in space flashing in an out of existence (possibly dependent on being observed by a mind) - then it's neither solid nor square nor fixed in a location in space, and the notions of tables as such could be said to be mind-dependent (down to how we've evolved to experience our environment). But to talk of it as concretely existing in a fixed shape and place in space can be a very handy framing when you want to put your coffee mug down. And it's this utility, and that we've evolved to observe in a way which is useful rather than accurate/truthful/real, which underlies the way we naturally frame things.
Yes, there is a difference between the manifest image of ordinary material objects such as tables and the scientific image of them. They are all fundamentally composed of elementary particles, and quantum physics teaches us that these do not have precise spatial locations. In contemporary physics, the ontology of particles, their spatial extension and location has become a tricky issue, especially as the ontology of quantum physics is generally a very tricky and highly contentious issue. That said, the concept of location or space-occupation still makes sense. Since this is off-topic here, I'll leave it at that.
Right, but you brought up the example of a square table as something real which exists, in the philosophy room, based on these types of qualities, and made the point that outside the philosophy room things are problematic - inferring that we need to use such criteria to establish unproblematic definitions of 'real' and 'exist'. I'm pointing out these sort of criteria can also be problematic.