thread: 2009-04-07 : 3 Resolution Systems
On 2009-04-08, Guy Shalev wrote:
Callan, you might want to read some stuff on Philosophy of Language, assuming you haven't already.
So if we say 'Gandalf' does not exist, how can we refer to him? How do people know what we are talking about when we say 'Gandalf' when he does not exist?
He exists, as a character in a story, he does not exist in our world, not as an old man who can do magic and smokes a pipe, he exists in our world as fiction.
And we can refer to it. Now, once you have the fictionary presence, you decide what to do with it. You make an arbitrary choice somewhere, when designing the rules or coming up with the Social Contract Construct, and off you go.
The imagined die, so long as it can be agreed what the imagined face is, has as much bearing as you choose to give it. If you choose that an _agreed_ imagined die is as real as a non-imagined die, then it works out.
That's why Social Contracts are so important, they don't just facilitate agreement, they /dictate/ what is true, what is real.
