Ascribing Attributes to Imaginary Entities

I would be the first to admit that this blog is a loose, baggy monster. Sometimes I use it to promote my own theory of narrative, sometimes to present interpretations of written fictions and of films, and sometimes as a vehicle for my own short stories. I hope that those who stumble over this blog by accident forgive me for so often digressing. It is the prerogative of all bloggers to write about whatever they want. In today’s post I thought I would follow up the previous one by talking a little more about truth and logical propositions. I concede that this post is quite abstract and difficult - I feel that people generally prefer to read my short stories rather than my philosophical musings. But perhaps someone might find this post at least a little interesting.

The current post concerns logical statements. Consider the proposition “All unicorns each have a single horn.” This is a universal proposition that would be falsified by the existential proposition “At least one unicorn exists that does not have a single horn.”   One of these two statements must be true and the other false. Empirically, it must be the second proposition that is false – we say this because no unicorns exist at all. Consequently, by the law of non-contradiction, the first proposition must be true.

Now consider the proposition “All unicorns each don’t have a single horn.” The counterpart to this statement is “At least one unicorn exists that has a single horn.” Once again, the existential proposition is false and so, consequently, the universal proposition must be true. We seem to have hit on a paradox! It seems that, logically, the proposition “All unicorns each have a single horn” and the proposition “All unicorns each don’t have a single horn” are both true - and yet they can’t both be true at the same time because they contradict each other. The problem we have here is that unicorns are imaginary and so one can’t truly attribute properties to them. One route out of this impasse is to decree that all propositions about imaginary entities are necessarily false. Another is to define all such propositions as meaningless. I believe (although I am not sure) that the later solution was the one adopted by Bertrand Russel.

There is a third approach. We could say that the proposition “All unicorns each have a single horn” must be true because it follows quite simply from the definition of the word ‘unicorn’. (The second universal proposition mentioned above would then be false.) The proposition "All unicorns each have a single horn" would be what Kant calls an ‘analytic truth’. Analytic truths are true by virtue of how we define the words we use. A famous example of another analytic truth is the proposition “All bachelors are unmarried.” This statement is true by virtue of the definition of the word ‘bachelor’ and (according to Kantian logic) would be true even in universes that do not have bachelors. If you were to ask the average man in the street which universal proposition concerning unicorns he believed to be true he would probably pick the one above; he would do so because it follows directly from the generally accepted definition of the word ‘unicorn’. Analytic propositions are true or false not by virtue of empirical evidence that verifies, supports or refutes them but rather by virtue of what people believe concerning the meaning of words.

So we must accept two types of truth, empirical truths and presumptive truths, truths based on fact and truths based on belief (presumptive is not quite the right word but I am unsure of a better word to use). In the real world there is, in fact, no clear-cut distinction between these two types of truth. Statements concerning ‘God’ or ‘love’ or ‘morality’ do not easily fall into either category. In antiquity, people believed that unicorns actually existed - reality is to some extent what we make it.

This discussion has enormous importance to the interpretation of literature. Literary criticism is entirely concerned with fictional entities – and yet we would like to think that some interpretations are true and others false, or, at least, that some interpretations are better than others. Consider the statement “Hamlet is a Dane” or the statement “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father”. Neither proposition is empirically verifiable and yet we would like to think that neither is meaningless, that both are actually true. The film “The Empire Strikes Back” defines Darth Vader as Luke’s father and consequently all future statements concerning Darth Vader must fall back on this definition.  The better solution to the paradox concerning imaginary entities it is to say that statements about fictional characters are analytic rather than empirical truths, that they are based on definition rather than on fact. In literary criticism and in many other discourses, it seems, truth does not depend upon factual evidence but rather upon an established consensus among the relevant community.

Obviously this discussion hinges on the notion of ‘definition’ and this opens up a whole other can of worms.  I may have to talk about it in a later post. For those interested I recommend an earlier post “On Metaphor and Interpretation”, a somewhat less dense and more readable essay. Those interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the literary theory I am proposing might want to have a look at it.