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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9320400" data-attributes="member: 71699">Certainly and deservedly controversial. Some platonists hold that Holmes exists as an abstract object, in which case there perhaps is an answer to your question, even if we don't happen to know it. Just in the same way that there may be mathematical identities that we are or were at some time not able to describe completely. The next highest prime, for example, the set of primes that haven't been calculated... and analogously Holmes' underwear.I'm a fictionalist in outlook. Even though I sometimes wonder how seriously one ought to take platonism, there is an ongoing debate such as between Brock and others like Friedell. For some it seems hard to dislodge an intuition that our ability to construct meaningful sentences about imaginary things requires those things to exist. &quot;3 is prime&quot; being perhaps one you would be thinking of, but equally &quot;Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective&quot;.Bottom line however, I'm with you in feeling that &quot;it doesn’t get off the ground as a theory of fiction&quot;. For one thing, even if there were real non-physical, causally inert objects (3, Holmes) additional theory (theories of maths, theories of fiction) would be needed to know what to do with them. The whole idea just invites a healthy application of Ocaams Razor.Were I a platonist, I could be in just the way you imply (believing 3 real, but Holmes not), but I could alternatively believe both 3 and Holmes real (and some say they do). It's interesting to reflect on precisely why intuitions about the former may differ from the latter.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 9320400, member: 71699"] Certainly and deservedly controversial. Some platonists hold that Holmes exists as an abstract object, in which case there perhaps is an answer to your question, even if we don't happen to know it. Just in the same way that there may be mathematical identities that we are or were at some time not able to describe completely. The next highest prime, for example, the set of primes that haven't been calculated... and analogously Holmes' underwear. I'm a fictionalist in outlook. Even though I sometimes wonder how seriously one ought to take platonism, there is an ongoing debate such as between Brock and others like Friedell. For some it seems hard to dislodge an intuition that our ability to construct meaningful sentences about imaginary things requires those things to exist. "3 is prime" being perhaps one you would be thinking of, but equally "Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective". Bottom line however, I'm with you in feeling that "it doesn’t get off the ground as a theory of fiction". For one thing, even if there were real non-physical, causally inert objects (3, Holmes) additional theory (theories of maths, theories of fiction) would be needed to know what to do with them. The whole idea just invites a healthy application of Ocaams Razor. Were I a platonist, I could be in just the way you imply (believing 3 real, but Holmes not), but I could alternatively believe both 3 and Holmes real (and some say they do). It's interesting to reflect on precisely why intuitions about the former may differ from the latter. [/QUOTE]

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