Topics Knowledge

Question Can you think of a single justification for your existence that Harry Potter couldn't use? "I think, therefore I am" doesn't work, because Harry thinks, but doesn't exist.

Accepted:
May 24, 2008

Comments

We have to take care over the interpretation of positive assertions about fictional characters. Consider the sentence "Harry Potter wears glasses". There seems to be a sense in which this is true. We might wish to say, for instance, that Harry Potter wears glasses but Ron Weasley does not. But there seems to be a different sense in which it is not true. We might wish to say that John Lennon really wore glasses, but Harry Potter doesn't. He can't really wear glasses, because he isn't a real person at all. The second kind of claim is just the literal sense we use in ordinary discourse about real things. When we make the first kind of claim, by contrast, we are indulging in a sort of verbal make-believe, pretending to go along with the fiction for the sake of our discourse. We might sometimes opt to make this explicit by prefacing our claims with an expression like "Within the fiction..." or "According to the story...". Of course, most of the time we'll leave this unspoken, but only because we are confident that our interlocutor already understands the context: as soon as we start to suspect that this assumption might be incorrect, we'll be quick to step in and make the requisite clarification. Suppose we've been telling a friend all about the world of Harry Potter and, after this has been going on for a while, they ask us, "So when can I meet this Potter guy? He sounds swell!" We'll quickly respond, "Oh, he isn't real! It's just a story." And then, once that point is understood, we'll then carry on with our positive assertions about the character.

So how about "Harry Potter thinks"? In the ordinary sense, the sense we intend when we assert that you or I think, this sentence is not true. Harry Potter can't really think, because he's not real at all. But in the other sense, the sense we usually adopt when we deliberately and knowingly talk about fictional characters, it is true. That is to say, J.K. Rowling's stories really do portray Harry Potter as a thinking being. But observe that we can say exactly the same thing about the sentence "Harry Potter exists". In one sense, this is not true. I exist, you exist, J.K. Rowling exists, but Harry Potter does not exist. But there is another sense in which it is true. J.K. Rowling's stories really do portray Harry Potter as an existing being.

Now, I presume (not having read the books myself) that she never actually presented the character as contemplating the proposition "I think, therefore I am": but, had it suited her purposes, she could very easily have done so. But this still would not have actually proved his real existence, because it would still have just been make-believe. When I contemplate that proposition, it satisfies me that I do indeed exist. Likewise in your case (dear reader), when you contemplate it, you can satisfy yourself that you exist. Harry Potter, by contrast, can't genuinely contemplate it at all. The most that he can do is fictionally contemplate it, i.e. he can be described as contemplating it within one of the stories. And there are in fact two consequences, one fictional, the other real, that might be drawn from that fictional contemplation. First, Harry Potter's fictional contemplation of the proposition could fictionally satisfy him of his actual existence. But a fictional proof is not really a proof at all. J.K. Rowling could write that Harry Potter had a cast-iron proof of his own existence, but merely writing this down wouldn't make it so: there's still no such proof in reality. Second, seeing such a line in one of Rowling's novels could actually satisfy us of Harry Potter's fictional existence. But that was never in doubt. To say that he fictionally exists means nothing more than that various remarks in J.K. Rowling's novels portray him as if he really existed, and this new remark would just be one more example to add to the pile.

Question Can you think of a single justification for your existence that Harry Potter couldn't use? "I think, therefore I am" doesn't work, because Harry thinks, but doesn't exist. Accepted:May 24, 2008

Question Can you think of a single justification for your existence that Harry Potter couldn't use? "I think, therefore I am" doesn't work, because Harry thinks, but doesn't exist.

Accepted:
May 24, 2008