15.4.2007
1) What is meant by what is 'real', as we ordinarily use that term,
is what is opposed to what is described in lies, fiction or illusions. If
someone does not tell the truth about what he did last night, then we can
sensibly ask what he 'really' did (instead of what he says he did); we may
also say that 'in reality' there was no such person as Gustav von Aschenbach
(whether under that name or not) as described in Thomas Mann's Death in
Venice; and we think that the spoon in a glass of water is 'not really'
bent (although it looks as if it is). These uses of the term 'real' have to
do with things that we say about a certain state of affairs - things that
we say may be true or false, and if we suspect they are false, we take it
that the state of affairs that 'really' obtains is different from the one
that they describe.
There is also much technical use of 'real' in philosophical discourse: some
of the things we say about ordinary objects (such as tables, trees etc.) seem
to be more fundamental to them than other. For instance, the yellow color of
some book is as much dependent on the lighting conditions as it is of the
paint that has been used for printing its cover. Thus the color seems much
less inherently something that is connected to the 'real' thing than, say the
rectangular shape is. According to a distinction that is a basic ingredient
in the modern philosopher's cookbook, there are 'primary' and 'secondary'
qualities of things, and it has been held that the former are real whereas
the latter are not. And there are of course all those philosophical views
that maintain that the world does not 'really' consist of the objects (again:
tables, trees, etc.) that we know, but instead of material particles, of
sense data, or other very special sorts of entities. (Such views are often
called 'reductionist', because they attempt to reduce everything to that
specific sort of entity.)
Actually, there is a plethora of views and discussions of this term and
related concepts, and it would be a good characterization of a good deal of
philosophical writing, both historical and contemporary, to describe it as an
attempt to capture the basic structure of reality, and therefore as aiming at
defining (or clarifying) that concept. My remarks are not intended to imply
any substantial view and I don't want to ascribe them to any particular
philosophical position or to any philosopher. I just wanted to give a bit of
context for the discussion which now follows, of Nozick's peculiar use of the
term in his Philosophical Explanations[1].
2) Nozick's use of the terms 'real' and 'reality' is different
from that which I have described so far. For Nozick, one's being (more or
less) real is a prime measure of living a full live. But although this usage
may have a certain attractivity (for Nozick's purposes), there is a number
of ways in which such talk of one's reality and 'being real' is highly
unusual.
For one thing, there is a supposed contrast between being real and
just existing. Fictional characters don't exist, although some of them
can be seen as supremely real, on Nozick's view. On the other hand, people
like you and me do exist, and that guarantees a certain (albeit only a basic)
degree of reality to us. To exist means at least to be somewhat real, whereas
someone's being real doesn't imply that he even exists (he might be a
character in a novel).
Note how this manages to (almost) decouple the concepts of being real
and existing (which is used in the sense of being actual). The reality of a
person doesn't imply anything in respect of whether that person actually
exists or is only fictional, and conversely, to exist grants you only the
most minimal reality, just short of insignificance. Nozick is not much
interested in existence; he seems to think (and correctly so) that there is
a clear enough understanding as to whether a given thing or person exists,
and there is not much more to say about that; whereas the interesting
questions begin where we look into how real that thing or person is. (I'm
in agreement with Nozick on the first part of this, that is, on the assumption
that we usually have a clear sense of whether something exists; and this
without being able to give an explanation of how we know that. However, I
think that there are interesting things to be said about this. But that
is another topic altogether.)
This also means that there is not much chance of defining any of
these concepts by use of each other. The idea of reality here does not derive
from existence, and mere existence doesn't imply anything about how much
reality is involved.
A second remarkable aspect of Nozick's discussion of reality is the
graduality that he assumes for all ascriptions of reality. Being real
is not an on-or-off thing; it is rather a matter of degree, and not just
within a single dimension, but along many of them. (There are predecessors
for this. Nozick himself quotes Plato, and one also feels reminded of several
medieval philosophical outlooks that postulate a hierarchy of being.)
Although, thirdly, Nozick talks about the reality of both things and
persons, I think it is evident from most of his discussions that reality, in
his sense, is something that primarily applies to persons. There is a
notion of intrapersonal comparisons of people's reality, and then there is a
number of remarks about what makes one more real - all of them bringing up
some way of leading a live, which plainly only human beings can do.
Finally, reality is something that can be achieved, and increased
over time. In fact, for Nozick being real has a number of dimensions (such as
beauty, value or depth). Striving for these means to strive for being more
real. Thus one's reality is taken to be composed, or combined, of elements,
each of which is also a matter of degree, and this results in a large
logical space in which a person's reality can be made out (or placed, for it
is exactly one of Nozick's points that one's location in that space is
largely up to oneself). This generates of course also the possibility of
accumulating (or losing) reality. One's reality is at least partly up to
oneself.
3) Given the pecularity of Nozick's use of 'real', one natural
question to ask is whether this is perhaps just an unfortunate choice of
terminology. Could his intention perhaps be rendered more accurately by using
a different term or concept? (Or perhaps similarly accurate, but without
having to employ an overloaded term?)
It seems that some notions, say that of 'fulfillment', or 'integrity',
which Nozick uses himself, might quite well capture the relevant aspects of
Nozick's 'being real', without the somewhat unclear set of connotations.
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[1] Robert Nozick, The Examined Life. Philosophical
Meditations, New York: Touchstone 1989, 128-140.
