QA #3: Question 2

The second question I was debating came from a quote in the Thomasson reading, it was a theorists claim that fictional characters exist within the very language which creates them and are thus independent of conciousness. This seemed perplexing at first as how can a character exist if no one is thinking about them? I then later thought about how I cannot say Sherlock Holmes is not real just because I am not familiar with those texts, I have just yet to perceive such texts and thus also the character of Holmes. In the same way speculations about elements and other components of space etc. are claiming that these substances may exists but have simply yet to be accessible to human sensory perception and measurement. The idea that fictional characters is independent of conciousness still seems problematic, but perhaps it is because the text preserves the character so that it could be potentially discovered is a better way to understand such a claim.