Soheil asked:

I want to ask you a question about our living...

Is it possible that we were in a story that an author is writing?

When I read Sophie's World I thought about it for several weeks and I realized that it is possible. But
after some days of talking about it with my friends, I understood that it's not important.

============

It sounds to me as though your friends are less philosophical than you are. You shouldn't be so easily
swayed!

In unit 2 of the Pathways Metaphysics program The Ultimate Nature of Things I use a thought
experiment similar to the plot line of Jostein Gaarder's novel Sophie's Worldin order to test the
"Reality Principle" (see my answer to Alarik, below).

The reality principle is a notion that comes from Freud: at some point in its early development, the
infant learns the difference between reality and fantasy. Freud took this to be a matter of great
significance. In metaphysics, what the reality principle states is that judgements about the way things
are can be wrong.When a judgement is 'wrong', what that means is that what we took to be real, or
the way things are in reality, is not real, or is not the way things are in reality. In other words, there is
always more to beingreal than what we thinkis real.

With me so far?

Here is my thought experiment:

I find to my horror that I am not whom I thought I was .... but a character in a novel that someone else
is writing. In despair and rage at this discovery, I make various attempts to spoil the story, by doing
things deliberately against what I perceive to be the author's intentions, but every plan of action I
undertake, to my complete surprise, turns out to be cleverly incorporated into the plot. All I am free to
do is argue with the author about how the story ought to go. But can we argue about matters of fact?
Is it possible for me — or for the author, for that matter — to have false beliefs about the world
depicted in the novel? Is the situation we have just described a coherent description of a reality, a
world?

Let's not worry about how I found out that I was a character in a novel. The important thing is that I
am convinced. Imagine that every so often, I hear a woman's voice in my head — the voice of the
author — and we discuss various ways in which the plot might develop. This sounds like a description
of madness! The idea we are considering in our thought experiment, however, is that this is not a
case of madness but the literal truth. The philosophical question is whether this idea makes any
sense.

First let's look at this from the author's point of view.

Novelists talk about the worlds they describe as seeming 'real' to them. What they mean is that the
can vividly imagine the things that go on in those worlds. The characters seem to take a life of their
own. But suppose now you asked a question about one of the characters, 'What really happened to
GK after his late-night drinking session?' If the novelist hasn't decidedwhat happens to GK — for
example, if what happens to GK isn't written down in a notebook, or in the draft version of Chapter 3
— then the question has no determinate answer. However, so long as the question is about words
written down somewhere, then according to the reality principle we are dealing with a kindof reality,
even though it is not physical reality. I have no objections to talking this way. If what happens to GK is
described at the end of Chapter 3, for example, then if you or the author thought something different
happened, then you'd be wrong.

Now let's look at this from my point of view, as a character inside the novel.

Let's say that on the night in question, I seem to remember drinking in the pub with Ian, Dave and
Sonya. As I picture the scene to myself, I hear the voice in my head:

"How could Sonya have been there. You split up the day before, don't you remember?"

"I don't believe you. I distinctly remember Sonya was wearing a tartan skirt and the green
mohair sweater I bought for her last Christmas!"

"She couldn't have been wearing that, because she gave it to the thrift store after it shrunk in
the wash."

"Then it must have been another green mohair sweater."

"Look, she was at her younger sister's twenty-first birthday party. What's more, you were
supposed to go with her!"

"Who said anything about a sister? Sonya doesn't have a sister!"

"Who's writing this novel, you or me?"

"Say what you like, I know Sonya was there and I'm not discussing it any more!"

What this imaginary dialogue shows is that, on the hypothesis that I am a character in a novel, it is
impossible for me to be wrongabout whether Sonya really was at the pub or not. Nothing obliges me
to accept the authorityof the author's claims against my own memory and judgement. Of course, I
can change my mind about what I seem to remember. But changing my mind about what I seem to
remember is not the same as discovering that the way things really happened is different from the
way I remembered it.

The conclusion is that the 'hypothesis', our imagined scenario of discovering you are a character in a
novel, is incoherent, logically absurd. It doesn't add up. According to the reality principle, we are not
dealing with any kind of reality or world here, physical or otherwise.

So the answer to your question is, No, it is not possible that you, or I, are in a story that an author is
writing. If you think about the route we took to get here, I don't think that the answer we have arrived
at is either trivial or unimportant.

Geoffrey Klempner