The point that I am trying to make is that the word “real” refers to a category of assumptions that have the potential to influence our behavior.
For example, when someone assumes that there is a physical world of Star Wars somewhere out there what they are doing is they are attaching the label “real” to the assumption that there is a physical world of Star Wars somewhere out there and assigning it a potential to influence their behavior. It does not matter what caused them to decide to categorize such an assumption as “real”. The fact that they did is all that matters.
What you’re doing here, it appears to me, is you’re trying to take the word “real” out of its context. You are trying to make it independent from human judgment. Which it is not. The word “real” is a label that is attached by humans to certain things (namely, assumptions) based on some set of rules. It is a word that refers to assumptions that have the potential to influence our behavior. And it is people who decide what assumptions have the potential to influence their behavior and what assumptions don’t. And they do so based on some set of rules. A lot of people do it by employing inductive reasoning. They look at the evidence they have, and then, based on it, they assign probability values to assumptions. But there are also people who do it based on their desires. An example would be a person who assumes he will become rich within next couple of years, not because his past experience suggests it, but merely because he wants it to happen. Every assumption has some sort of origin and based on that origin it can be categorized as either evidence-dependent or evidence-independent. The two terms translate to objective and subjective. That’s what objectivity and subjectivity really mean. They are epistemological concepts. They are not ontological concepts. In the same way that reductionism and atomism are epistemological (see Bertrand Russell’s logical atomism) rather than ontological (see Democritus and other varieties of physical atomism.)
I really think that there is a physical body behinid your Internet persona. That’s an assumption too.
Whatever hasn’t been experienced can only be assumed.
Reality is a reference to the category of assumptions that has the potential to affect one’s behavior. That’s what it is. Very simple. When you say “this is reality” what you are saying is “this assumption has the potential to influence my behavior”. Similarly, when you say “this is NOT reality” what you are saying is “this assumption has no potential to influence my behavior”. That’s all these words mean.
You are making a mistake in thinking that “what exists” is separate from “what one thinks exists”. It is not. You cannot say that something exists without it begin something that you think exists. It’s very difficult for people to accept that their opinions are merely their personal opinions and not an exact or an inexact reflection of some never-changing state of affairs. People don’t like fallibility. They cannot consider the possibility that what they are doing might turn out to be a mistake. They prefer to think that will keep doing what they are doing for all eternity.