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Technically, by rote logic, that is correct; you cannot be certain something doesn't exist just because you haven't seen it.

However, if you take that position all the time, you can't do science. It's a thought process that was in use hundreds of years ago, from the time of Aristotle until it started to be questioned by Copernicus, out-and-out challenged by Galileo, and finally obliterated by Newton.

It has since been replaced by induction which says that a pattern of existence or being can be inferred to be the way things are. Observational evidence, thus, became the scientific standard. Why? Well, simply because we can actually move ahead and yet change our theorems when new evidence presents itself tomorrow. It's how we know things like "1^n=1" or "birds lay eggs."

If you want to speak of science, on any level at all, you have to let go of the "just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist" idea. We can induce that these things don't exist because we haven't seen them and have seen no evidence of them.

The standard is not "prove they don't exist" because that is not possible to do. Rather, the standard is "prove they do by showing them to me."

So, yes, it is a logical fallacy that you can know something does not exist by not seeing it. However, science works on induction, not logic.

These creatures are fictional until you show one to me.

Berz.

Dracula is a bad example. There is actual, physical documentation for where the legend comes from, Vlad the Impaler. There's no real proof that he was a vampire in the classic sense, but one can easily see where that comes from.

Things like dragons and merfolk are a different matter. There is no documentation on where they might have come from, so all theories are supposition. The best ones I've always heard are anthropological (ie. dragons are an amalgamation of threats that posed problems for our ancient ancestors in pre-history, for example), but there are also theories along the lines that say mystery conjured up imagination (ie. some guy was pondering what was beyond the shoreline one dark and moonless night and thought he saw a beautiful woman with the tail of a fish). So yes, myths and legends do come from somewhere, but that's not, by any means, always a physical source. Our ancient ancestors had imagination, too, and it was much less hampered by things like science.

Fantasy can be realistic or unrealistic. That's perfectly fine. But every time I or someone else try to say "but this stuff isn't actually real so we can make of it whatever we want" you seem to have a tendency to jump on it and say "but how do you know it isn't real? You should treat it as real like I do." That is what is making me crazy.

All I'm asking here is for you to consider that the worlds in my brain don't function like the worlds in yours. I choose to treat these as non-real in the sense that I can apply science to them or not as I see fit. A "non-real" definition of a creature is no more or less valid than a "real" one. And, since most of the mythical creatures out there tend to work along the lines of something that could not exist, one would think that there may be something to the imagination involved in their creation.

There is no single, authoritative way a creature has to be portrayed. And the discussions around here keep going that direction. It's making me crazy.

Berz.

Gee, all this talk is making me crazy too, he-he. I see you both are keeping things real and not taking them too far. I'm glad we can all discuss things without getting way too serious. mrgreen

Aye, I agree Mel I'm all for being a philosipher of some sort, this discussion makes me want to smack you and Berz for all your repetitive concepts and such. People have opinions, Man made fantasy and Man made science, as such we can change both however we see fit. After all who will tell us we're wrong?
The greatest thing I've heard sombody who was(to my knowlege) not a philosipher was that the truth is often based on opinions. This I believe to be a fact, and thusly a paradox for this is my belief and surely not the one of others.
I suppose that may have been off topic at some points though I could not sit and watch you debate while remaining silent.

Probably because they're getting crowded out by semi-serious angst...

... and that's on both our parts.

Please see the thread "what makes it fantasy?" for my theories on why we're each not getting the other's viewpoint. That's really where the debate about genre belongs anyway.

Berz.

Hopefully long term depending on what we say and how ideas take off.

Hmm, that's good to know. So, could we discuss about philosophy here? I mean, most philosophers usually talk about existence like, René Descartes once said "I think, therefore I exist". We could discuss this kind of thing here, right?