When we read stories in a book or watch popular TV shows do the characters, not actors, actually come to life? Do they actually believe they are real, or are they in sense real? If someone was to create a sitcom, say Friends, would the character Russ actually live the life of Russ and walk around in the created "universe" of Friends? How don't I know that my life only exists in and was created by the mind of another?
I've often pondered this thought since I was a kid. I once watched a show (the title is unfamiliar) where the "real life" characters jumped into a comic book and interacted with the characters in the comic. It was as if the comic had created a seperate "universe".
As you can tell I'm not as educated as you philosophers, but I am still young yet. It's also probably quite apparent that I've never had any philosophical education either. My whole life I've been asking questions and have only recenty started to gain answers. Any answers or speculations you offer would be...
When you consider that characters in stories are so much like us, it can be disconcerting: if they're like us, then we're like them, too. Indeed, what distinguishes us? Just that they're in stories and we're in reality? But couldn't they say the same about us? That's a very tempting line of thought, but we should resist it. There is a big difference between something's being represented as being so, and its being so. I can say that I have fixed the car, but that doesn't make it true that I've fixed the car. Someone might counter, yes it does--it makes it true according to you . But being true according to me is not a way of being true any more than being not true is a way of being true. This can be a little hard to see because of a very natural way we have of describing what someone has said. Often, instead of saying "Crimmins says that the car is fixed", we say, "The car is fixed, according to Crimmins". That makes it sound like the car is fixed, though not in...
- Log in to post comments
