Less real
can one thing be less real than another thing?
If yes then, what is the least and most real thing?
If no then, what is everything as equally real ~ a universality? An infinity? An object [define]?
That depends on how you define ‘real’. If it is something that is sensed then an object which can be seen, heard, tasted, felt, smelled, could be considered more real than something not detectable by one or more senses. A dog is possibly more real than the odorless, colorless, tasteless gas carbon monoxide.
yes but that would be more-real-to-us i.e. perspective based with a bias toward you the subject. Here the question I think more concerns all-reals or all-realness – if you will. …what is reality as relative to the op’s context.
I would say that it is truer to state that; ‘the dog has greater effect upon us’ or is more solid or dense [?] in some fashion?
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As soon as you talk about reality, you are only playing a word game with definitions. Reality itself is beyond words and thoughts.
A dog can bite you and carbon monoxide can kill you. So ‘greater effect’ is again based in word definitions. ‘Solid’ and ‘dense’ are scientifically defined.
The question is : what is your purpose in asking about ‘real’ things? The correct answer depends on your intentions.
As soon as you talk at all, you are “playing a word game with definitions”.
As soon as you think, you are thinking a “word game with defined concepts”.
But try to get a reasonable grasp on reality without doing either.
For me, everything is real. The less real stuff is less important in reality. The most real thing would be the core of reality, like a central energy circulator.
By this, a tree would be more real than a pebble, and the sun would be more real than the moon.
phyllo
my intentions are to attempt to discover more about reality and how we can further define it… I am a philosopher 
I would think that everything is beyond words [they are mostly representative in nature], I don’t know about thoughts though, because we can think in terms of all the senses.
‘Ones perception is only limited by ones imagination’.
I admit that I don’t, nor do I think anyone can, have an infinite imagination in terms of shape and form [possibly because they are not infinite], but e.g. our emotional perception isn’t limited by shape, structure and form. ergo our minds aren’t limited in that the mind is that emotion_being_unlimited.
We can expand our perception to think about notions of the infinite, even an emptiness where the perception cannot find limits.
edited
Everything is words. A thing is a word. What is behind a thing? No-thing.
No. Being is univocal. It is said in the same sense for everything that is. A corporation is as real as the employees that comprise it, who are as real as their skin cells, their ties, their shoes, televisions, bank cards, beliefs, repressed desires, and so on. If a thing exists, then it exists.
Let’s push this a bit. For me, a thing is real inasmuch as it is capable of producing effects. The effects it produces (or is capable of producing) defines the sort of reality proper to it. There are different categories of existence, but all things equally exist. God exists, yes, but only mythically; his effects are psychical—people are persuaded to act differently in accordance with their belief in him. But, as a physical body—no, he doesn’t exist; he doesn’t produce any effects. But myths exist just as bodies do: two different types of existence, both equally real. What would it mean to say that a thing is less real than another? How strange the thought that I become more real the more I influence others, the stronger I become, or the more weight I gain. How strange the thought that my reality diminishes as I near my death, growing old and withering. No! Death isn’t the nihilation of reality, but only of form—for my body will cease to exist, yes, but only in the shape it currently holds; its decomposition will feed microorganisms, compose well with soil, and so on. And the flesh that feeds those microorganisms will be just as real as the flesh that currently adorns my typing fingers. Two different forms, both equally real. I feel I have to repeat this as a mantra to you at this point.
Last, everything as equally real does not one thing make. My body and the body of my computer can enter into a productive assemblage, the effects of which are, among other things, the production of this very post—but they do not together comprise a larger whole. And, by extension and by analogy, neither can the same be said for the universe at large. Art galleries do not compose with rainforest ecosystems in order to fit as parts into a universal object, or some other such pseudo-mystical nonsense. The universe is not an object but a complex heterogeneous series of networks. Why this urge to totalize? The universe is open, processual, ateleological. It is not a closed set. It is not complete.
In effect, real and unreal do give different sensations. When two things are described, one as more real then another, it can be said, the two are equally real. However it is impossible for two things to appear, or seem to be equally real. That is the point of departure for the consequent confusion. There are different levels of reality due to the various levels of interpretation, points of view, and context. We really can not reduce all reality is univocal, since it is neer impossible to set up objective criteria of what the real reality is. The most which can be said is that, there is a real, which transcends reality of differing sensibilities.
In asylums you might get some indepth answers. What is real to those that do not see the world as “normal” people do.
A few months back I watched a duck trying to attack nothing. At first I thought a flying bug might be pestering it but, there was none. The other birds were calm. What ever was agitating that duck into aggressive action was real to that duck but, not to the others. Does that make it less real? Wether chemical imbalance or a sense, it was real and that duck was feeling it or seeing it move around. Can we simply dismiss the duck’s reality as insanity or can we say that a change in chemicals with in the brain may have given sight to a different reality that truly exists if one can tune into it? Change the channel on your TV. Does that last channel cease to be real?
See my comment on existential categories. We might classify those delusions as “real” inasmuch as they produce effects on the people that suffer them. But we do not include them (say, the ghosts they think they see) in our reality. We include them only as psychological defects, perhaps chemical imbalances or otherwise.
It doesn’t make it less real, just real in a different way. Perhaps the duck was recalling a traumatic memory of leaving its young (I’m reaching here), and reacting violently to what was overwhelming it. That memory is real, of course. It just doesn’t exist outside the duck’s body.
Now this is a different question entirely. I think that there is one reality. If the duck was hallucinating (this example is getting pushed a bit far now) the existence of a predator, we can say that the hallucination is real, but that the predator is not: the duck, then, is just wrong about the external existence of the predator, the way Christians are just wrong about the external existence of God (though we can, analogously, call him real as myth, or, more cynically, real as delusion).
To reiterate, all things are equally real, just real in different ways—but emphatically not to different degrees.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I think that whatever exists, must logically be tied to or rooted in reality. So technically whatever exists is real in some way.
We tend to label experiences during sleep as “dream experiences” and experiences outside of sleep as “waking experiences”. So I think at the very least, this suggests there are different ways of experiencing reality or existing.
I think you could say something like “a dream experience is not as real as a waking experience” because it does not include as much of reality as possible. Dream experiences aren’t as potent as waking experiences.
(edited)
As far as our subjective experiences are concerned, I don’t see how we could consider virtual worlds or dream worlds as being as comprehensive and detailed as our “real” world. I think that at the very least, this implies that there are varying degrees of reality regarding our experiences. For example:
When one experience (dreaming) is real in a different way to another experience (awake), then the experience with greater depth and breadth is surely the experience that is more real or more inclusive of reality.
conclusion: So if we say one human has 2 senses rather than all 5, then surely the human who has all 5 of his or her senses, is experiencing more of reality. By definition, if something is experiencing more of reality, then its experiences are more real.
Certainly real
Agreed. So now we need to think about what that everything is with respect to that ontological information.
Hmm, I have seen visions that seemed far more real, I am just saying that even if all that stuff is just our brains, then the brain can create something equally real. If fact i’d say that’s what the mind/brain is doing all the time ~ making its reality. The only difference to me is where some things in the mind are derivative in info from the world, and other things to the mind itself [or maybe elsewhere, but that’s another debate].
If someone’s dreams had greater depth and breadth than their waking experiences, then I would argue that their dreams are more real. It doesn’t matter if the experience is just a dream because it doesn’t matter if the experience is internal or external. What matters is the quality of the experience.
Lets say one set of X’s experiences include all his 5 senses in an unconventional way (dream), whilst the other set of his experiences only includes 1 (he lost his 4 senses in an accident). One set of his experiences includes more aspects of reality than the other. If the quality of his 1 sense waking experience is so strong that it outweighs the totality his 5 unconventional dream senses, then his waking experiences include more of reality. If not, his dreams include more of reality.
Both internal and external experiences are real in some manner. I think quality of experience, as opposed to manner of experience, is all that matters regarding how real an experience is.
Do you have something in mind?
Yes, that’s sounds similar to Buddhist/Hindu reasoning, where we end up at nirvana being the greatest reality [infinity perhaps]. My problem with that is where we need a third party measure, such to determine/measure any given comparatives [two or more things] one against the other/s.
In other words, we would need something that >is< realness ~ the thing of, such to make a comparison. …and it would have to be the biggest thing i.e. infinite, and then there can be nothing else ~ because all places are occupied ~ it is unlimited [we are not talking the mathematical variety here, but the thingness of infinity i.e. reality as infinite]]. we have simply measured reality to an infinite extent, and in doing so stretching it beyond all things lesser than the largest thing - so to speak.
In short logically we have to say that all things have an equal reality!
Logically we can say anything. We can describe reality in terms of a series of logical assertions. The assertions comprise of answers yes or no of qualitative and quantitative identities.
As an example: any reality is described in the following way. What is seen? Is it a tree? (Y/N). Is it green (Y/N). Has it leaves? (Y/N)
Are the leaves fallen? (Y/N)
If all of the answers are Y,b then we may conclude that the season is fall, or winter, depending on other descriptive identifications.
The logical representation, for instance, if it’s found to be a green tree in winter may be, that the tree is an evergreen. (That is,if the scene is not in a warm climate where winters do not reflect that sort of logic.)
Here, all things have equal reality, if and only if, the answers to descriptions are Y. If they are N, then the described realities are not equal.
There are as many realities, as there are variances in the number of logical identifications which can be answered on a set of logical descriptions.
If such descriptions are too numerous to identify within a certain time span, (because changes of perception will result in different interpretations- do to changing lighting), then the statement of logical equivalence can not be made, except as an approximation. An objective standard by other people is impossible for the same reason, because for them too, reality constantly changes.
Therefore realities may not be logically equivocal and further, a logically founded absolute reality has no ground. Finally, if reality is such a notion, (an absolute), then reality doesn’t exist. And then the conclusion “nothing is real” becomes axiomatically valid. So the Beatles were right.
I think this is probably what’s going on in quantum superposition. They say that until a particle’s position is measured, it exists everywhere at the same time. Of course, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Really, it exists in a wave-like pattern, with the crests of the wave being the region of highest concentration and the troughs being the regions of lower concentration (since the wave doesn’t have any clear-cut boundaries beyond which it ceases to exist, they say it exists everywhere at once). But these “regions of concentration” aren’t quite regions in which the particle is “smeared out”–rather, they are the regions in space where you are most likely to find the particle when you attempt to measure it’s position.
IOW, until you measure its position, the particle doesn’t have an exact position. It’s position is “unreal”. Yet at the same time, the wave-like pattern entails that the distribution of probabilities of finding the particle here or there are not uniform throughout all of space–there are higher probabilities of find it in some places than in others–and so it’s position isn’t completely “unreal” either. I think the particle’s position is only “partially” real.
Amorphos,
And so it is …. when there is the demand, from the question you posed, to take a position and formulate an answer from the information that one has about reality. The demand creates the medium through which a beginning point of seeking is established. Then there is a space in which the search for the answer will move. But there must be an ending point for there to be the formation of an idea or concept of something in your mind. And of course that takes some time. So the time and space created by the process of thinking is limited to its perpetuation, its continuity and its permanence. Consciousness is so vast that it seems that there is no mysterious seat of consciousness where we can go to and say that is the place or that is the position.