The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. What cannot be actualized is not possible; it is impossible. Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item. He is impossible because he is incomplete. Only the complete (completely determinate) is actualizable. Sherlock is incomplete because he is the creation of a finite fiction writer: Sherlock has all and only the properties ascribed to him by Conan Doyle. Not even divine power could bring about the actualization of the Sherlock of the Conan Doyle stories. What God could do is bring about the actualization of various individuals with all or some of Sherlock's properties. None of those individuals, however, would be Sherlock. Each of them would differ property-wise from Sherlock.
Surely something has gone wrong here? Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories as if they were the accounts of Holmes's investigations written up by Dr. Watson. Is there not a possible world in which a John Watson writes a history of a detective called Sherlock Holmes using exactly Conan Doyle's words?
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