Treating reality as relative seems like it could solve a few philosophical problems. That is, instead of “is X real?”, ask “is X real relative to Y?” (For backwards compatibility, “is X real?” will simply be a shortcut for “is X real relative to the person asking this question?”)
From my perspective, characters in a story are not real. From their perspective, I am not real. Characters from the same story are real to each other. Where “real” means “can interact physically (or whatever is the local equivalent in case of a fictional universe”.
This also fits the question with Many Worlds Hypothesis or Tegmark Multiverse. For example, alternative Everett branches are not “real from my (in this branch) perspective”, but the situation is symmetrical.
Treating reality as relative seems like it could solve a few philosophical problems. That is, instead of “is X real?”, ask “is X real relative to Y?” (For backwards compatibility, “is X real?” will simply be a shortcut for “is X real relative to the person asking this question?”)
From my perspective, characters in a story are not real. From their perspective, I am not real. Characters from the same story are real to each other. Where “real” means “can interact physically (or whatever is the local equivalent in case of a fictional universe”.
This also fits the question with Many Worlds Hypothesis or Tegmark Multiverse. For example, alternative Everett branches are not “real from my (in this branch) perspective”, but the situation is symmetrical.