Telling the Tale

Extract

If on a general knowledge test, you were given the question ‘“Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street,’ true or false?” you would quite correctly answer “true.” On the other hand, if approached near Baker Street Underground Station by a naive tourist with the question “Is it true that Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street?'’ you might quite correctly answer “No, it is not true. Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character.” Cases of this sort seem to some people to create a problem, while to others they seem merely to pose a puzzle, the solution of which is obvious enough in principle though perhaps somewhat tricky in detail. I belong to the second group, and in this paper I undertake to give the main lines of a solution to the puzzle along with some, though not all, of the trickier details.

Let me begin with some statements which I will try to defend in due course: there is a human activity which we may call “tale-telling” which consists of putting forward certain sentences in such a way that they are neither asserted nor denied.