ABDUL

Hi V

I think it is not a condition for an entity to exist to be physical in the world and observable by human beings. Physical existence in a form of existence, but there are other non-physical existence (or physical but we human beings can not observe). So I can say SH in an idea that exists in the mind as well as in books, tapes, video cassettes, DVDs etc. (see more in my posting on SH)

I do not think SH would be an abstract idea, because he -as idea- resembles an object of a class called human being. If we deal with the class itself, I would brand the case as abstract, but when we deal with an instance of that class (Mr X, or Mr Y) then we are no more dealing with abstraction.

Abdul

V

Hi Abdul - you are quite correct : there are many non physical  entities  allowed in our ontology. Quine himself  agrees that numbers and other mathematical  entities  exist . These things are known as abstract particulars. And  the properties of such entities lack spatio-temporal reference because they are as Quine says .'.the cube root  27 just is not a spatio-temporal kind of thing.' see the footnote on p 180.

But ideas in the mind do not have the same kind of 'existence' because they do represent (or resemble) the physical  entities of which they are 'ideas' or mental entities or perhaps mental states ( I'm not sure about mental events). And so ( like Quine  on the Parthenon and the Parthenon-idea)  when we refer to our 'idea' of  something which has  a spatio-temporal characteristic then the idea cannot exist ( in the usual sense of exist or be) because it does not have  such a spatiotemporal reference.Mental entities do not exist in space-time.( so ideas can't play the violin)  Which is why I tend to the notion of classifying  literary figures  as abstract entities. They have an existence but not in our physical world of space time.

The key problem is getting clear the ontological status of mental states/mental ideas/ mental acts/mental events. And I must think more about this. 

ABDUL

SH presented in the mind of CD as an idea of a detective man. When we read the story of SH the word man -since we all know what that word means- gives us a lot of information about SH even though CD might have not thought about it. So we know that SH eats, drinks, walks, sneezes, has dreams, etc. These are all true for a man. Playing violin needs an extra skill which we do not know if CD had not said it explicitly about his brain-child (SH).

ABDUL

I think to make the discussion on SH complete we need to bring linguistics as well in addition to metaphysics. When we say the English word "person" what does that include? How about the term "fictional person", or to narrow down further "fictional detective". Qualifying through the word "fictional" takes out from SH some attributes of real physical "person", so we are sure that SH never walked on earth as flesh and blood, he only walked on fictional world present in minds, books, CDs, DVDs, etc.

ABDUL

Things vary in their forms and thus vary in their type of existence. In my view following might be a rough classification:

1. There are things which exist in spatial-temporal “real” world which we –as human beings- can feel (by eye, touch, smell, etc.). E.g., a book on my desk.
2. There are things which occupy space and time, but we can not feel them (yet because of our lack of technology). E.g., Angel, Daemon, God.
3. There are things which exist in mind and gets encoded in paper or other electronic devices. These things can be sub-classified into two categories:
1. These things have similitude in the real world (Sherlock Holmes)
2. Things which do not have similitude in real world as far as human knowledge is concerned. (Pegasus [see footnote 1])
4. There are things which we are sure are not possible to exist in real world, however they can be talked about and written in various formats. (round square dome).

Abdul

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Footnote [1]: One interesting information we have in Islamic tradition is the existence of Pegasus-like creature which carried Prophet Mohammed in a return night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem within minutes!

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