Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Does fiction actually have existence?

This is a fascinating discussion of whether or not fictional people, events, and settings (like Harry Potter) actually exist (and, of course, the answer to that question depends on how one defines the word "exist" and in the context where the question is asked). The video is from the Idea Channel, and the concepts presented here (and in the preceding video) can melt one's brain if one is not careful. I'd really like to read some other reactions to this presentation.

I think it has some bearing on our website because we write fan fiction about fictional characters in familiar but fictional settings and get our noses out of joint when someone insists that "You can't write it that way because it's not real! The characters would never speak/behave/think that way!"

I really liked the reference to the worlds of Myst, where one change - no, I'll let you find it. And I'm posting this for entertainment value only. Your mileage will probably vary.

Spoiler:

Ouf, that hurts my brain! Interesting find!

But it did make me think about the terms canon and fanon and headcanon...


https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlik...ifference_between_fanon_fan_fiction_and/

I watched the first eight minutes of the video. (Up to the start of the viewer feedback.) It brought back memories from my grad school semantics class, most of which I fear I have forgotten.

A couple of things that I do remember:

1) A lot was made of the sentence "The morning star is the evening star." (Both refer to the planet Venus.) Since this is the L&C board, I can make the exact same point with the sentence "Clark Kent is Superman." If the meaning of a word or phrase is its referent (that is, the object in the real world to which it refers), then the sentence would always be about as interesting as "a rose is a rose"; that is to say, it would be a straightforward tautology. But as Lois Lane's reaction in the vast majority of Revelation fics would attest, that is clearly not the case.

2) There was a lot of discussion about how, and the extent to which, communication is possible. For example, suppose I were to tell you, "I had a dog growing up." What kind of dog would you envision? A chihuahua? A Saint Bernard? (In point of fact, I had had a miniature schnauzer.) The word "dog" brings to mind vastly different images to different people.

So, from these two examples, we can see that neither the idea of word/phrase meaning as a representation of an actual real-world referent nor the idea of the meaning as one's inner vision of a Platonic representation of an abstract referent are sufficient. (My apologies if I have mis-represented the concepts; I haven't thought about these things since I took the class about three decades ago.)

As I recall, there were quite a number of other hypotheses that were brought up and struck down, but no conclusion was ever reached in the course.

And KSaraSara, for what it is worth, that class was one of the more challenging ones I took; you have company. It might also have helped if the video had been slowed down by about half.

Thanks, Terry, for sharing this video.

Joy,
Lynn

Those are fascinating points, Lynn! I love the tautology example.

Thanks, KSaraSara.

BTW, I meant to mention in the first post: Did anyone else catch the Superman cosplayer who appeared briefly on the screen at around one minute and fourteen seconds?

Joy,
Lynn

Lynn, I'd like to comment further on your first point.

I respond to this point thusly.

1) The morning star (Venus) and the evening star (Venus) are the same physical entity, but they are referenced differently according to the context. I suggest that they are, in fact, different "things" not because they are two different heavenly bodies but because they are viewed differently. Venus in the morning has an identity that is separate from Venus in the evening. Ancient cultures without the astronomical observational equipment we have would have referred to the "morning star" and the "evening star" as two separate phenomena because they didn't know they were both the planet Venus. The context identifies them.

2) Similarly, the statement "Clark Kent is Superman" is correct when we think of the (fictional(?)) male humanoid who variously identifies as CK or SM but who does not identify himself as both at the same moment of time. Because he keeps the public recognition of either entity separate, we can state that Clark Kent and Superman are different entities - because of the context, you see. Superman does not interview people or correct Lois' spelling. Clark does not lift space shuttles into the sky, nor does he catch bullets in his bare hands (not where anyone can see it, anyway). Because the Clark/Superman entity keeps the two identities separate, we can legitimately say that they are two different beings, even though we know that "Clark Kent is who I am. Superman is what I do" because we, as fans and readers and authors, are inside the mythos.

All this is not to say that I disagree with you, simply that in such discussions there are multiple points of view. One might make the argument that neither Clark Kent nor Superman exist as beings in the Superman fictional world because the appearance of one cancels out the existence of the other. They cannot exist simultaneously in the same space-time continuum. (Alt-Clark doesn't count - he is a distinct entity/being/identity all his own.) It's almost as if one is matter and the other is anti-matter, except there's never a catastrophic reaction because they never make contact with each other.

Mind-bending, isn't it? My wife thinks I'm a little nuts to even think about stuff like this. Of course, she's a Twi-Tard (a Twilight movie franchise fan), so there's that fictional(?) world too, where she can tell me all about the different characters, their motivations, their ambitions, their frustrations, and I just can't get past "the vampires sparkle in sunlight."

Your observation about Superman at an outdoor cafe table left out Spiderman, Wolverine, and Cyclops. They're obviously debating the question of our existence.

Hello Terry,

Actually, you are making the point I was making, only more eloquently; namely, that the meaning of a word can not refer simply to its real-life referent. Another aspect of the point is that many words do not have a real-life referent. For example, would would be the physical counterpart to "of" or "the"? Such words are not meaningless; therefore, the meaning of words can not simply be the referents. Another way to disprove this theory: since unicorns and vampires don't exist in the real world, both of them have as real world referents the null set. Therefore, if meaning were to reside solely as real world referents, then the sentence "unicorns are vampires" would be true; both would refer to the same (non)entity.

The discussion of the morning star vs. the evening star took place in the first week of the semantics class, since "meaning = real world referent" is the hypothesis students would most likely come up with first, and is the easiest one to prove incorrect. In that context, the words "connotation" and "denotation" also came up. A word's denotation is a word's primary definition; its connotation is its emotional or cultural nuance. The following words and phrases all share a denotation but have different connotations: to die, to pass on, to pass away, to croak, to kick the bucket, to buy the farm, to shed one's mortal coil. Although all refer to the ending of a life, they most certainly could not be used interchangeably.

I think you would enjoy reading a book on semantics.

I love it.

Joy,
Lynn