Is there any difference between a fictional character and a real person that has no physical body?

>people not recognizing a vital question in the philosophy of language

I hold the opinion that at any time, a fictional character is non-existent (check out Everett's Against Fictional Realism)

Alternatively, for people dead or not yet born, it depends on what you think about time (I.e. Only the present is qualitative, or all time counts)

I am undecided on the latter.

So dead figures from history are presently no different from fictional characters. Interesting.

In what sense can a "real person" exist without a body?

Even if you grant the idea of souls, or whatever else metaphysical attribute to humans, they stop being "real persons" in this world when they die anyway.

This. Nothing that doesn't have a physical form exists.

What about a novel, and by extension, the plot of the novel?

>comicbook writing

Doesn't exist

you're asking whether unicorns exist because you can think of them

try and keep your ideas in carefully sorted baskets please

I think you misunderstand what I mean to say.

Suppose I held in my hand the novel 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.
Would you say it is real? By extension, wouldn't it be fair to say that the plot is just as much part of the novel that I hold in my hand, as the name to my person?

By the second panel the concept has already reached retarded levels.

The writer tells us two things
1. "real" is not binary but a scale, things are not either real or not real but have degrees
2. The scale is measured by how well known something is

These are some truely strange ideas and neither of them are given any justification.

Than again you are reading fucking cape-shit and thinking it's philosophy.

By what scale do you measure the reality of somethings existence?

That's not really the point. I'm willing to entertain someone else's defination but they need to back it up.

If you define existence as being a measurement of how well a certain thing is known this is basically what's that say about Dinosaurs? Until we discovered the fossils no one knew what they were? Did they mean they didn't exist and than when the first fossil was found they only had a minor existence (since one person now knows it)? Did they than start to exist "more" as more people learned about them?

I am not saying his definition of existence is right or wrong, I'm saying the axiom is trash so any conclusions drawn from the axiom are hot air.

As an example let's I could say to exist means to be under 30 years. Than I would right a spooky story about how everyone who is over 30 years old must actually be an illusion, you die the moment you turn 30 and get replaced with an illusion. It sounds entertaining but it's completely meaningless because the axiom I gave (existence=being under 30) is not really elaborated on or backed up.

The comic would make a lot more sense if you substituted the word "exist" for "influential". Than the genies speech about how everyone knows about him, how artists work with him, would make sense, it would prove the axiom true by showing examples of him being influential.

It's real as a story. Just like a rock is real as a physical object. A rock in a book is real as an idea, but not real as a physical object.

>The comic would make a lot more sense if you substituted the word "exist" for "influential"
That's different.