The Objective and the Subjective in a Parallel Universe

In the fictional world of Tlön, the objective world and the subjective mind are the same, so every thought is reality, and vice versa. My guess is that the reader is supposed to apply that school of thought to the fictional world that the narrator of the story is informing us about. So the fact that someone took the time to write about Tlön means, ontologically, it actually exists.

A meta-fictional Möbius strip exists between the narrator’s story and the heresiarch that formulates the “nine copper coins” thought experiment. Someone has written an encyclopedia about a world called Tlön, which we as readers, as least initially, think is kind of silly. Within that world, there is a philosopher who formulates a set of rules that is very much like our universe, and his colleagues chastise him and call it absurd. For the collective brains of this parallel universe, all minds, ideas, and objects are one and the same, and they can’t imagine something existing outside of their scope of sentience. They cannot imagine the coins just sitting their in the sand, existing along, even though no one perceives them. 

As we read of this universe, our very disbelief in it shows that we have the inverse problem. The existence or nature of this place is not up for discussion – it either exists or it doesn’t, no matter what we think of it. We can’t fathom our consciousness having any bearing on the universe.

The “Volume 11,” and a lack of any other volume, I think, is evident that the inhabitants of Tlön are redefining their universe step by step by their thoughts. And the fact that the Earthlings who formulated this universe are doing the same suggests that we can do the same.

The thing I liked most about this story is that is in an ontological exercise in its very format. I don’t recall if you mentioned this story’s status as being fiction or nonfiction, and it could very well be either. It begs the question of what the difference is between fiction and nonfiction. Then again, as the story teaches us, it may not matter – perhaps if we were all to come to a consensus one way or the other, that decision would be objectively true.