J.L.Austin says that `unreal' wears the trousers, and contrasts `real' with synthetic, ersatz, artificial, imaginary, illusory, etc. But remember that the word was coined by philosophers, not shop-keepers.
Marks of Reality
- .
not dependent on any person, not subjective
- .
independent of the observer
- .
independent of whether known or not; contrasted with epistemic
- .
resistant to will; brute facts; what happens willy-nilly
- .
independent of other things (cf. Faraday's arguments for the real existence of fields).
- .
not transient; permanent
- .
completely determinate
- .
rational, explanatory
- .
required (to be quantified over) by well-established theory (Quine: ``To be is to be the value of a variable'')
- .
has massergy
- .
independent of whether constructed or not
- .
corrigible.
Click here to return to
main argument
Click here to go to main page