GE Morton wrote: ↑September 1st, 2022, 9:09 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 1st, 2022, 7:55 pm
No, what exists only according to some fiction exists in no sense (of "to exist"). Fictional objects are nothing but nonexistent objects of thought or imagination, and there is nothing self-contradictory about saying so.
Think that through. If objects of thought don't exist, then of what are we speaking? By acknowledging or postulating an "object of thought" you per force assert its existence. You can say that nothing satisfying its description exists in the "external world" or within the scope of the laws of physics, but not that it "doesn't exist in any sense."
If something I think about doesn't exist, I still think
of it.
Objects of thought needn't be
mere objects of thought, since I/we can think
both about existent things
and about nonexistent ones. I do not "postulate" nonexistent thought-objects, because I do not claim self-contradictorily that nonexistent thought-objects exist. I'm merely claiming that
some of my/our thought-objects don't exist, which is different from claiming that
there (really) are nonexistent thought-objects.
Moreover, there are different
kinds of existents, but no different
meanings of "existence". Existing as an elephant is different from existing as a mouse, simply because elephants are different
in kind from mice, and not because they exist in different senses of "exist". Existence is a genus with exactly one species, so to speak: Existence is existence, and there aren't any lower or higher forms of it—"subsistence" or "supersistence".
"If an object is non-existent, it is non-existent. End of story."
(Priest, Graham.
An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 296)
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 1st, 2022, 9:09 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 1st, 2022, 7:55 pmNo, it is not the case that "anything we can denote with a term and usefully communicate about exists," because many things we meaningfully think or talk about, mention or refer to have no form of being, existence, or reality whatsoever. They are just not there, being nowhere and nowhen!
Of course they are somewhere --- wherever and whenever we think about them or talk about them. Do you really want to say thoughts, ideas, etc., don't exist?
There is a difference between
an object of thought and
the thought of an object. The existence of
thought-objects is one thing, and the existence of
object-thoughts is another. Of course, thoughts exist somewhere, namely in people's minds/brains. When I think of Sherlock Holmes, my thoughts of him are in my mind/brain;
but he is not, and he isn't anywhere else either.
It is a necessary truth that for all nonexistent thought-objects there is some existent object-thought representing it. The concept of a (conceptually, linguistically, or otherwise semiotically)
nonrepresented nonexistent object is incoherent. Existent objects (of thought) aren't necessarily represented by some kind of signs or other, but nonexistent ones are.