What is real?
Many philosophers, from Descartes to Kant, have systematically questioned what reality is for a long time. Also some regular folks, that history doesn’t have any account for, have wondered what it means to be real and what is real around them. As one of the latter I have the luxury to write down my thoughts without too many footnotes and bibliography. I remember the last time I got into this I was in a Tequila bar in San Diego with a friend, but I had too much Añejo to have any clue in so far as where the discussion landed.
In general I’ve always thought of reality as something that can be split into two. An objective reality and a subjective one. The objective reality being the one that exists even without observers and the subjective one being the one that takes shape only when a brain capable of cognitive functions perceives it. I consider the above pretty uncontroversial and I’ve a mental model in which most people living today share this view, although I’m probably wrong. What I find fascinating is to think more precisely about what falls into each category.
Let’s start with the objective reality, this should be the easy one, it’s the one that is there even without observers. Picture a peaceful meadow with a forest of trees, a canal and a bridge, pretty much what I’m staring at as I’m sitting in my living room, my gaze set on Port Meadow, a 4,000 years old piece of land that separates Oxford from Wolvercote. Now let’s remove ourselves from the equation. What is left of the meadow? Pretty much everything right? The trees, the canal and the bridge are still there. Only that if we are not there there’s no names for them so it gets a bit tricky to refer to them. The “meadow” is still there but what has become of it? We can easily argue that its physical matter still exists, the “trees” will keep their properties but without anyone to observe them they will not have any meaning. Also any functional characterisation that we might have of any of those objects goes away. Would the “grass” still be wet if nobody was there to feel it? Certainly the “grass” would still have such property but what feels wet to us might feel nothing to an alien visiting the planet. It might feel like burning for all we know. But if both the “grass” and the “leaves” on the “tree” feel wet for us, and the “grass” feels like burning for the alien then we could probably argue that also the “leaves” would feel like burning for the alien assuming some kind of consistency exists in the way the “wet” property affects both the “grass” and the “tree” and assuming that there’s no other property that differentiate these two objects that would change the alien’s perception in the two cases. So how do we characterise the objective reality in so far as the “wet” property goes? Because we have not only lost its name but also its meaning. A meaning that could be something else entirely or not exist at all (even the concept of meaning might not exist). I like to think of what’s left as a pattern (see the Problem of universals) and I like to think of them as the fabric of objective reality. It’s quite poetic when I close my eyes and picture them as waves that oscillates and propagate in time and space (are time and space part of what’s objective? Are they are also just patterns? See Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics) creating everything we know albeit not making any assumption about what they might or might not mean.
Let’s try and go with this, what falls in the subjective reality then? Maybe this is the easier one after all. The subjective reality is what each one of us experiences walking through the meadow (see Representationalism). What we all experience is different, the meadow could mean peace for someone, loneliness for someone else. Different cultures can look at the same object and draw different conclusions, the same applies to different brains at the individual level, with a smaller variance the more the individuals partaking in the observation share the same culture, beliefs, and personality. But since none of us “feels” exactly the same when observing something it is safe to say that there are as many subjective realities as there are subjects, which explains why people argue over things and why half of the population was in shock in light of recent political outcomes in different countries.
What does this leave us with?
With a measurable objective system of patterns that is self-consistent and meaningless.
With a human brain capable of perceiving these patterns in one of infinite possible ways.
With a mind compelled to collapse to one of these infinite possible meanings for each one of the patterns that it can observe.
With most individuals living their life assuming their subjective reality is the same as the one of everyone else.
With scholars of scientific and technical faculties that measure the objective patterns and with scholars of humanities faculties that study the meaning associated to them.
With scholars that over time have printed dictionaries for different cultures and languages, giving a reference name and a meaning to everything that surrounded them so that they could co-exist in the same space and not argue too much about the basics.
With individuals that were born after the dictionaries were written that take for granted names and meaning of everything they could perceive.
With far too many people carrying on with their lives without spending nearly enough time wondering about what anything means starting from their own selves to the world that surround them.
