(Another angle: consider Harry Potter. Harry Potter is fictional, but he’s still “a thing”; I can know things about Harry Potter, the things I know about Harry Potter can have predictive power, and I can discover new things about Harry Potter. So what does it mean for Harry to be “fictional”? Well, it means we can only ever “see” Harry through metaphorical TV screens—be it words on a page, or literal screens.
Values are “fictional” in that same sense; reward is the medium in which the fiction is expressed.)
(Another angle: consider Harry Potter. Harry Potter is fictional, but he’s still “a thing”; I can know things about Harry Potter, the things I know about Harry Potter can have predictive power, and I can discover new things about Harry Potter. So what does it mean for Harry to be “fictional”? Well, it means we can only ever “see” Harry through metaphorical TV screens—be it words on a page, or literal screens.
Values are “fictional” in that same sense; reward is the medium in which the fiction is expressed.)