RJG wrote: ↑July 14th, 2021, 6:17 am
Pattern-chaser wrote:If there are an infinite number of worlds, then there is a world where any given story is reified.
If the given story is actually possible, then this could be true within an infinite reality.
Pattern-chaser wrote:So although a story is created and presented as fictional entertainment, it will actually happen somewhere, sometime.
But not all fictional entertainment is actually possible.
Interestingly, Saul Kripke argues that fictional or mythical creatures such as unicorns are impossible objects, ones which don't exist in any (metaphysically) possible world:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/poss ... jects/#Uni
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"I shall try to give a brief explanation of the strange view of unicorns advocated in the text. There were two theses: first a
metaphysical thesis that no counterfactual situation is properly describable as one in which there would have been unicorns; second, an
epistemological thesis that an archeological discovery that there were animals with all the features attributed to unicorns in the appropriate myth would not in and of itself constitute proof that there were unicorns.
As to the metaphysical thesis, the argument basically is the following. Just as tigers are an actual species, so the unicorns are a mythical species. Now tigers, as I argue in the third lecture, cannot be defined simply in terms of their appearance; it is possible that there should have been a different species with all the external appearances of tigers but which had a different internal structure and therefore was not the species of tigers. We may be misled into thinking otherwise by the fact that actually no such 'fool's tigers' exist, so that in practice external appearance is sufficient to identify the species. Now there is no actual species of unicorns, and regarding the several distinct hypothetical species, with different internal structures (some reptilic, some mammalian, some amphibious), which would have the external appearances postulated to hold of unicorns in the myth of the unicorn, one cannot say which of these distinct mythical species would have
been the unicorns. If we suppose, as I do, that the unicorns of the myth were supposed to be a particular species, but that the myth provides insufficient information about their internal structure to determine a unique species, then there is no actual or possible species of which we can say that it would have been the species of unicorns.
The epistemological thesis is more easily argued. If a story is found describing a substance with the physical appearance of gold, one cannot conclude on this basis that it is talking about gold; it may be talking about 'fools' gold'. What substance is being discussed must be determined as in the case of proper names: by the historical connection of the story with a certain substance. When the connection is traced, it may well turn out that the substance dealt with was gold, 'fools' gold', or something else. Similarly, the mere discovery of animals with the properties attributed to unicorns in the myth would by no means show that these were the animals the myth was about: perhaps the myth was spun out of whole cloth, and the fact that animals with the same appearance actually existed was mere coincidence. In that case, we cannot say that the unicorns of the myth really existed; we must also establish a historical connection that shows that the myth is
about these animals.
I hold similar views regarding fictional proper names. The mere discovery that there was indeed a detective with exploits like those of Sherlock Holmes would not show that Conan Doyle was writing
about this man; it is theoretically possible, though in practice fantastically unlikely, that Doyle was writing pure fiction with only a coincidental resemblance to the actual man. (See the characteristic disclaimer: 'The characters in this work are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental.') Similarly, I hold the metaphysical view that, granted that there is no Sherlock Holmes, one cannot say of any possible person that he
would have been Sherlock Holmes, had he existed. Several distinct possible people, and even actual ones such as Darwin or Jack the Ripper, might have performed the exploits of Holmes, but there is none of whom we can say that he would have
been Holmes had he performed these exploits. For if so, which one? I thus could no longer write, as I once did, that 'Holmes does not exist, but in other states of affairs, he would have existed.' (…) The quoted assertion gives the erroneous impression that a fictional name such as 'Holmes' names a particular possible-but-not-actual individual."
(Kripke, Saul A.
Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. pp. 156-58)
"I should mention, especially in light of the fact that Putnam emphasized these cases, my views about imaginary substances, as, for example, a magic elixir or unicorns. There, too, I would hold that one cannot intelligibly say, as is usually said in the literature, that though there are in fact no unicorns, unicorns might have existed. Why do I say that we cannot say this? Well, unicorns in the myth are supposed to refer to a certain species, a certain natural kind of animals. The term ‘tiger’ does not just mean ‘any old animal that is yellow in color with black stripes’. An animal, whether existing in fact or only counterfactually, even though it looked just like a tiger on the outside, would not, if it were a reptile on the inside, be a tiger, as I have emphasized (Kripke 1980:119–21, and elsewhere). Similarly, of course, something with a different chemical composition from water would not be water. Hence the statement ‘water is H2O’ is a necessary truth.
If one is referring to an actual animal, one may of course pick it out by what Putnam calls a ‘stereotype’ (Putnam 1975a), without knowing what its internal structure is or how to differentiate it from other bogus things like fool’s gold or fool’s tiger. David Lewis once mentioned marsupial tigers to me, which might come along. One need not be able to make the differentiation as a layperson, and one may leave it up to the scientists, who may take a long time to do so, but we can still refer to tigers. That is because tigers are around; we have historical causal connections to them in the real world by virtue of which we can refer to them. Those properties that determine their essence can be discovered empirically later; when they are discovered, we can say which possible (or actual) animals resembling tigers wouldn’t have been (or are not) tigers.
The same thing, I say, holds of unicorns. If the story about unicorns had really been true, then of course the animals would really be around and we could refer to them and discover their internal structure later. But suppose the story is completely false, that there is no connection with any actual animal. Then one should not say that ‘unicorn’ in this story simply means (let’s say this is all the story tells us) ‘that animal which looks like a horse and has a single horn’. One should not say that ‘unicorn’ simply means
any old animal like that because then it would not be a pretended name of a species. In fact, one might well discover a new fragment of the story that explains how sometimes people were misled by animals that looked just like unicorns and mistook them for unicorns. These fool’s unicorns commanded a high price on the market until their internal structure was discovered. The story, however, does not specify the differences in internal structure. ‘Unicorn’ is supposed to be the name of a particular species. We are given a partial identification of them; there are other criteria that would pick them out from fool’s unicorns, but we are not told what these criteria are. Nor can we say ‘Well, let’s wait for the biologists to find out’, because biologists cannot find anything out about unicorns. Thus of no possible animal can we say that it would have been a unicorn. One can merely say that it would look the way unicorns are supposed to. If a possible world contained two very different species, both fully conforming to the aforementioned story, one could not say which of them would have been unicorns.
Speaking of the actual world, I want similarly to say that a mere discovery that there were animals that answered entirely to whatever the myth says about unicorns would not, in and of itself, constitute a discovery that unicorns really existed. The connection, unlikely though this may be, could be purely coincidental. In fact the myth may say, ‘The species mentioned in this myth is mythical, and any resemblance to any species extant or extinct is purely coincidental’. Let us suppose it does in fact say this. This shows that what one needs is not merely the fact that the animals in the unmodified myth satisfy everything that unicorns are supposed to satisfy, but that the myth was
about them, that the myth was saying these things about them because the people had some historical and actual connection with them.
There are, then, two distinct theses here. First, we could find out that unicorns actually existed, but to find this out we would not just have to find out that certain animals have the properties mentioned in the myth. We would have to discover a real connection between the species and the myth—at least in the case of a species that is highly biologically unspecified. If a precise biological specification of it were given, the answer might be different. A complete description of the internal structure (and perhaps a specification of its place on the evolutionary tree, genetic inheritance, and the like) might lead us to say, ‘By accident it turns out that there is a species exactly like that’. But that is not what usually goes on in stories and myths. Moreover, the way I have been putting it may be too epistemic. I am not really talking about what we could ‘find out’. I am giving requirements for it to be true that unicorns actually existed, contrary to what we normally think. However, were the specifications precise in the terms that I have just mentioned, then, if a kind meeting these specifications (structure, position on the evolutionary tree, etc.) actually existed, the story might arguably be true, and genuine propositions about the kind in question might be expressed, even in the (unlikely) case that the connection is purely coincidental."
(Kripke, Saul. "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities." In
Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1. 52-74. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 65-7)
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