I tend to think of the real as that which is empirical. What exactly counts as empirical is already a philosophical question, but I'd distinguish the real from the existent, and from being.

I tend to think of the real as that which is empirical. What exactly counts as empirical is already a philosophical question, but I'd distinguish the real from the existent, and from being. — Moliere

Would you say that empirical is a kind of justification? Statement X is true. The justification is empirical. Statement Y is true. This is justified by reason.

Couldn't both statements be about something real?

Reality is limited by what we can know and experience. That which we cannot know or experience cannot be something real, for it is not a "thing" to begin with. Things, i.e. objects, are real by virtue of the fact that we know them. From a transcendental perspective, however, they are ideal, since we supply the categories with which to know them. Hence, all objects are both empirically real and transcendentally ideal. To speak of the transcendentally real is a category mistake. Or if we do speak of that which is beyond all experience as being real, we do this by analogy to what is actually real.

Reality is limited by what we can know and experience. . — Thorongil

But Thorongil, I know Santa wears a red suit. Santa is not real.

How about the difference between "know" and "suspect"?

Teacher: "You don't know anything, Yogi"
Yogi Berra: "I don't even suspect."

Urbain Le Verrier predicted that Neptune existed, and Johann Gottfried Galle first observed it, having some knowledge of where it should be. Neither was "the first" in a sense. Others had suspected that there was a missing planet, and others had observed the planet without knowing it was missing or was even a planet. But a mathematical demonstration was needed: Planet X is causing perturbations in Uranus's orbit. "This" is the orbit it should have, and... Look! There it is!

So, seeing in this case was not believing, and believing (the math) led to confirmed seeing. The people who only "suspected" there was another planet out there didn't know enough. (Some people suspect there is a planet exactly opposite of earth which we can't see because the sun is always in the way.)

We don't know much about neptune (it's big, it's dense, and it's cold). We've seen it. Sort of, anyway. It's blue. That's not much, but knowing that something exists at all is knowing quite a bit, especially compared to "don't even suspect".

About the Eiffel Tower we both know a great deal, and can know more. You could, for instance, run your hands over the entire surface of the thing, top to bottom. You could smell, taste, feel, hear, and see every piece (not recommended). You could have as much intimate contact as you wished. You could further study it exhaustively with x-rays, stress gauges, and other devices. After doing all this, would you "know" the tower better than the tourist who comes, sees, takes a selfie, and moves on to the Louvre? Yes you would. But you can't "feel" what it is like "to be" a tower, to be a bolt subject to a certain amount of shear. You can't know what it is like to be me, and you can't know what it is like to be a bolt, either.

Is that I can't know everything about real things? For instance, I can't know everything about the Eiffel tower. It's real. If there's a tower of which I know every true statement, that has to be a tower I made up. It's imaginary. — Mongrel

Most times I can't recall my dreams, meaning that I'm not even an expert of my own imagination. Other times my dreams have been crushed, which has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but it's a melancholy aside.

The difference between the real and the unreal is that the real is out there and the unreal in here. I know, very simple, but sometimes we have to accept that everything we learned in kindergarten (and even before) is true.

I understand your meaning. But knowledge is only of perception. Concepts in and of themselves do not yield knowledge. They have to be grounded in perception.

I could make up a word, let's say, florga, and then say it's a particular type of tree bark. Unless I have perceived, or inductively conclude based on reading a book on dendrology, the existence of a florga, then I cannot claim on any grounds, in the case of my personal experience, or good grounds, in the case of what dendrologists say, to have knowledge of it.

To drive the point home, if we grant your reasoning about Santa Claus, literally anything thinkable would have to be said to be known, which is obviously impossible given the infinite number of contradictions that would arise in doing so. Hence, you couldn't actually establish as true anything at all, including the claim that you have knowledge that Santa Claus exists. So your claim of knowledge concerning Santa Claus is self-defeating in the end. You have knowledge of red hats and are merely applying that to an imaginary figure.

Gotta think.. will be back.

I think it is effect. A real threat is worrisome, an unreal threat, not so much. A difference between play, and meaning it. To call something unreal, is to attack it at its importance, significance, or consequence.

Why can't you be worried about an unreal threat, like when you're afraid of something that really will never happen, like being afraid a bear is going to eat you when you go camping when really there aren't any bears. Also, you could not be worried about a real threat, like when you go camping in the woods in a cave with a bunch of bears, but you thought they were all really nice, but it turns out that they were sons of bitches.

I thought I'd use bears and caves as my example because that's something that we've all come across.

We can be worried about unreal threats, or not worried about real ones, but it takes us considering them real to be worried, and unreal to be unworried. Real things we take seriously, unreal things we do not take seriously, because of how they may effect us, or their significance.

I think the various meanings of 'real' only have a family resemblance, often involving contrast to their contraries or contradictions. The 'real' that opposes 'unreal' has a different meaning to the 'real' that opposes 'illusion', and different again to the 'real' that opposes 'imaginary', and different again when we attach it to 'number'.

What's 'real' is really asking what it means to be conscious and if we even are.

We might have to think they're real not to be worried, but they don't have to be real for us to worry about them, which means there might not be anything real, even though we're worried about things.

Real things we take seriously, unreal things we do not take seriously, because of how they may effect us, or their significance. — Wosret

No, things we think are real we take seriously, not "real things we take seriously." It doesn't matter whether it's real or not real; it only matters if we think it's real.

Oh @Hanover, you miss the point. The subject is what distinguishes the real from the unreal. I wish to place the distinction with our orientation to them, and how they effect us. You presuppose a conception of them in order to suggest I'm wrong. You're skipping a step, and just taking for granted your idea of what they mean.

Would you say that empirical is a kind of justification? Statement X is true. The justification is empirical. Statement Y is true. This is justified by reason.

Couldn't both statements be about something real? — Mongrel

I think has more to do with how the justification for a given claim "bottoms out". So, the fact that a claim is not directly justified by appeal to empirical observations does not automatically disqualify it from being about the real. A statement is only disqualified in virtue of its justification ultimately bottoming out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person or group (or into claims about the structure of attitudes as such). So to give a simple example, justification for claims about Harry Potter will ultimately bottom out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person (i.e. JK Rowling), whereas the justification for claims about the chemical composition of DNA will ultimately bottom out in appeals to empirical observations.

I think has more to do with how the justification for a given claim "bottoms out". So, the fact that a claim is not directly justified by appeal to empirical observations does not automatically disqualify it from being about the real. A statement is only disqualified in virtue of its justification ultimately bottoming out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person or group (or into claims about the structure of attitudes as such). So to give a simple example, justification for claims about Harry Potter will ultimately bottom out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person (i.e. JK Rowling), whereas the justification for claims about the chemical composition of DNA will ultimately bottom out in appeals to empirical observations. — Aaron R

I don't think this is right. Imagine that someone has made a list of justifications (call this set J) for a statement about something and this suffices to demonstrate that r is real. I can invent a set of justifications (P) that is just J with the last statement "at least this is how it is in my Harry Potter Fanfic". By the assumption on J, P suffices to show that r is real, but r is also unreal by construction. This implies that a set of justifications can suffice to show something is real if some subset of that set shows that it is real - or alternatively, that some subset of the set of justifications shows that something is unreal.

"bottoming out" would correspond to choosing the last element(s?) of this set of justifications, right? Then whether something is real or unreal depends on the last (few?) justifications given for it.

I think I can explore a number of the above answers with the same question:

Imagine that we live in a time when we can't see the dark side of the moon. We have the ability to imagine that the moon is a semi-sphere and that the dark side is flat. But we reject that, not on empirical grounds, but on the grounds that it defies reason.

In this case, "The moon is a sphere" is not based on observation. Wosret's comment that we distinguish the real from the unreal by virtue of the potential for effect along with Bittercrank's mention of the original case for the existence of Pluto both point to the part reason plays in distinguishing real from unreal.

McDoodle's view is undeniable. If you go to teach a youngster what we mean by "real" you'll inevitably find yourself pointing to things that aren't real to provide contrast. And the looming possibility here is that there really is no "ultimate" criteria for deciding that something is real. Frequently, as Hanover mentioned, the distinction really comes from getting on with life.

The theory that I posed in the OP comes from the hypothesis that a fair amount of the time, I am thinking in terms of indirect realism. My theory of truth is Correspondence. I'm looking for the representation that best corresponds to the real (mainly when I'm at work.. in my free time I'm a high-functioning lunatic). But I can hear somebody like Banno asking: why does your praxis have to be about representations?

What occurred to me was that of the realm of fiction, we collectively know everything about it because we made it up. It's the realm of the real that gives rise to the concept of the truth which is unknown. And in fact, there's a little bit of unknown regarding everything that's real. That's why I say I'm thinking in terms of representations. I take the moon to be real. But I don't know everything about it. It's here that the divide appears between my representation of the moon and the real moon appears.

If I left out somebody's cogent point... could you say it again?.

So to give a simple example, justification for claims about Harry Potter will ultimately bottom out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person (i.e. JK Rowling), whereas the justification for claims about the chemical composition of DNA will ultimately bottom out in appeals to empirical observations — Aaron R

I was objecting to the use of "empirical" to describe a real object. My point was that "empirical" is a property of justifications for accepting the truth of a statement. Real objects have properties like tiny or red... not empirical. The dark side of the moon scenario i wrote about above is meant to make that point. Agree?

For instance, I can't know everything about the Eiffel tower. — Mongrel

Why do you think that you cannot know everything? It seems to me that taking the time to do so would be the only thing from stopping you. Or do you think that just because you will never know everything about it then it cannot be real. Would it then be real for someone that does know everything about it?

I don't think this is right. Imagine that someone has made a list of justifications (call this set J) for a statement about something and this suffices to demonstrate that r is real. I can invent a set of justifications (P) that is just J with the last statement "at least this is how it is in my Harry Potter Fanfic". By the assumption on J, P suffices to show that r is real, but r is also unreal by construction. This implies that a set of justifications can suffice to show something is real if some subset of that set shows that it is real - or alternatively, that some subset of the set of justifications shows that something is unreal.

"bottoming out" would correspond to choosing the last element(s?) of this set of justifications, right? Then whether something is real or unreal depends on the last (few?) justifications given for it. — fdrake

Hi fdrake. Bottoming out is not really a matter of selecting which element comes last in a list of justifications that someone has arbitrarily generated with respect to some claim. What counts as justification for any given claim is ultimately determined by the norms governing rational discourse, and the content of those norms is (generally speaking) not entirely under the authority of the particular individuals who happen to be engaged in any given instance of discourse.

For instance, suppose that you were to ask me to justify the claim that water has a boiling point of 100 degrees centigrade, and I were to respond by saying that the United States Congress recently declared the boiling point of water to be 100 degrees centigrade. You might accept my response depending on whatever else you happen to believe about the reliability of the Congress in declaring matters of scientific fact, but more then likely you'd press me to offer a better reason. In other words, you're not willing to let the justification of that claim bottom out in a claim about the decrees of the US congress, and the reason you're not willing to let it bottom out in that way has to do with your understanding of what counts as a legitimate form of justification for the type of claim under question, and that understanding is ultimately based on your grasp of the norms of rational discourse, the content of which you did not determine and do not (personally) have any ultimate authority over.

I was objecting to the use of "empirical" to describe a real object. My point was that "empirical" is a property of justifications for accepting the truth of a statement. Real objects have properties like tiny or red... not empirical. The dark side of the moon scenario i wrote about above is meant to make that point. Agree? — Mongrel

Yes, I agree that "empirical" is not a property of objects. My point was that the real/unreal distinction is better understood in terms of the structure of justification rather than in terms of complete/incomplete knowability. I'm not convinced the latter is viable. For instance, does anyone know how many hairs were on Hamlet's head the moment he uttered "to be or not to be", or what Romeo had for breakfast the day before he died? I think you are on the right track in appealing to that fact that we have authority over the fictional in a way that we do not have over the real. However, I don't think that this authority entails complete knowability, and would argue that this difference in authority is better understood in terms of how claims are justified. To have authority over the truth of a claim is a matter of its justification being ultimately grounded in your attitudes (e.g. whims, prejudices, beliefs, desires, intentions, stipulations, etc.). So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts?

So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts? — Aaron R

What about laws? Aren't they real even though we have authority over them?

I would tend toward saying "no", though I think we need to distinguish between laws qua normative standard and laws qua causal entities. Whereas we have authority over the normative content of our laws, it might still be necessary for sociologists to refer to laws qua causal entities in order to explain the dynamics of human social systems. It is in the former rather than the latter sense that I would tend to say that laws are not real.

So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts? — Aaron R

I don't think this gets over my objection, that the real is understood by contraries or contradictories, implying there is no real-in-itself. What is the negation of this set of real objects? (I'm temporarily hooked on logical words) Or, to put it another way, I can't imagine a set of objects that is not ultimately justified by appeal to someone's attitudes.

I take as locally real what I and my fellow adjacent humans accept as best current approximations. The landscape seen from my window is really there, and yet there is a well-known blind-spot in it, quite apart from the fact that a different sets of lenses with a different optical range would see more (which leads some of a scientific persuasion to argue that it's only the microscope that sees what is really there). But put us in the dark then give one of us night-vision glasses and they will be able to tell the others what's really around us.

And then, put me in a laboratory and I will be altogether more particular and fine-grained about what's real.

And then, take me to an evangelical church another Sunday and we will debate quite other reals.

And thence to the illusionist's show, and on to the opera where I will unexpectedly find my real feelings (concealed during all these other realities) overflow into tears when a woman sings of her lost child, as she did yesterday at a stunning performance of Janacek's 'Jenufa' that I went to!

I don't think this gets over my objection, that the real is understood by contraries or contradictories, implying there is no real-in-itself. What is the negation of this set of real objects? (I'm temporarily hooked on logical words) Or, to put it another way, I can't imagine a set of objects that is not ultimately justified by appeal to someone's attitudes. — mcdoodle

Your initial post on this thread argued that the word "real" has various meanings depending on what it is being contrasted against. You mentioned real/unreal, real/illusory real/imaginary and real/abstract. My initial thought in response is to deny that these truly designate different senses of the word "real" by claiming that the illusory, imaginary and abstract are simply different categories of the unreal. Claims about the illusory, the imaginary and the abstract all inevitably bottom out into claims about people's attitudes, though they will each do so in different ways. Or least, that's what seems prima facie reasonable to me at this point, without having devoted much serious thought to the matter. Perhaps you could comment on whether or not you agree before I spend more time thinking about it.

You also said above that you can't imagine a set of objects that is not ultimately justified by appeal to someone's attitudes. Sorry if this comes off as nit-picking, but it's the claims about objects, rather than the objects themselves that are/aren't justified. In any event, empirical observation claims are most often presented as the exemplar of claims that do not need to be justified by appealing to claims about anyone's attitudes, because they can instead be justified by appeal to claims about the reliability of the causal mechanisms that produced them.

To put this in terms of "authority" and "attitude-independence", I would argue that empirical observation claims are the class of claims from which our authority is withdrawn by default as a matter of course. In other words, we tend to treat our own empirical observation claims as attitude-independent by default. This is basically the conclusion of Wilfrid Sellars's argument for the priority of "is" with respect to "seems"; we naturally assume that perception is veridical unless confronted with good reasons for thinking otherwise, at which point we might (but don't have to) retreat into claims about how things "appear" or "look", which is a move that simultaneously expands our authority over our claim and retracts its purport with regard to what "is", thus increasing its justificatory dependence upon our subjective attitudes.

In any event, this inevitably raises the question of circularity. Observation claims are justified by appeal to claims about causal mechanisms, but claims about causal mechanism are justified by appeal to yet more observation claims. This obviously won't be convincing to anyone who doubts the veridicality of perception in general. If we accept Sellars's arguments for the priority of "is" over "seems" and also the contention that observation statements form the non-inferential basis for all other "is" claims, then the skeptic's challenge amounts to the claim that we can perform a global suspension of the concept "is". I think that a semi-persuasive argument can be made to the effect that, insofar as the skeptic wishes to demonstrate his conclusion, he will inevitably appeal to claims about what "is" the case, thus undermining his very position.

The point of all that rambling was to try to secure the notion that empirical observation claims can function as the set of claims that do not bottom out into claims about anyone's attitudes insofar as they (1) are treated as attitude-independent by default, (2) can be structured into virtuous circles of justification and (3) can't be thrown into question en masse without engaging in pragmatic contradiction.

Finally, you mentioned finding your "real" feelings while watching Janacek's 'Jenufa', and it's not my intention to deny either the truth or the meaningfulness of such claims. I agree that the word "real" is used in many different senses, and I am not suggesting that there is a single "correct" way to use the word. I am concerned with a particular usage that has been in play as part of the on-going dialectic of Western (and perhaps even non-Western) philosophical thought since at least the time of Aristotle. I'm sure we could get into debate over the extent to which that claim is true, but my point is simply to state that there's a particular concept and associated dialectic that I am interested in, and I don't consider it to be problematic that there are other usages that happen to fall outside of that scope.

Sorry this post was so long.

@ OP: I suggest taking a look at the ontology of Alexius Meinong.

Yes, I agree that "empirical" is not a property of objects. My point was that the real/unreal distinction is better understood in terms of the structure of justification rather than in terms of complete/incomplete knowability. I'm not convinced the latter is viable. For instance, does anyone know how many hairs were on Hamlet's head the moment he uttered "to be or not to be", or what Romeo had for breakfast the day before he died? — Aaron R

This had occurred to me. Fictional worlds imply unknown truths. But look at the statement: "Hamlet's hair-count was 90,000." Is that statement ever truth-apt? The term "reality bubble" comes to me to describe the way we enter fictional worlds, hypothetical situations, and even contemplate possibility. It's a kind of psychological act (to take Ying's inspiration).... to suspend disbelief and accept a fictional world as real. It's when we inhabit the reality bubble that it seems that there are things about Hamlet we don't know. Exit the bubble, and it's obvious that those questions don't have answers.

It's odd that you picked Hamlet. To me, he's a character who is trying to see beyond his reality bubble... which makes it an extraordinary play. I've found that not everybody interprets it that way, though.

. So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts? — AaronR

Right. Although I think your point about Hamlet indicates that the set of real objects doesn't have a fixed membership.

OP: I suggest taking a look at the ontology of Alexius Meinong. — Ying

Thanks!

This had occurred to me. Fictional worlds imply unknown truths. But look at the statement: "Hamlet's hair-count was 90,000." Is that statement ever truth-apt? The term "reality bubble" comes to me to describe the way we enter fictional worlds, hypothetical situations, and even contemplate possibility. It's a kind of psychological act (to take Ying's inspiration).... to suspend disbelief and accept a fictional world as real. It's when we inhabit the reality bubble that it seems that there are things about Hamlet we don't know. Exit the bubble, and it's obvious that those questions don't have answers. — Mongrel

The problem that I see with this is that exiting the "reality bubble" has the effect of making all fictional claims seem like they are not truth-apt, not just the ones that we can't know the answers to. So at this point I'm not convinced that we can leverage that idea to support the notion that complete knowability is the criterion for unreality.

It's odd that you picked Hamlet. To me, he's a character who is trying to see beyond his reality bubble... which makes it an extraordinary play. I've found that not everybody interprets it that way, though. — Mongel

Indeed. I love that play.