mid-real

Some common questions demand surprisingly nuanced answers in practice. For instance: "How real is this thought?" My unremarkable position is that a thought's realness is equal to its connections to actions whose outcomes affect and are affected by realities. These actions may be relatively mental, such as reviewing a mathematical proof, and/or relatively passive, such as observation. But at times the action is more or less the opposite of abstract: perhaps I claim that the thought of a tall, wide, concrete wall on my near left side is real because I can lean over and extend my left arm until I touch it.

This definition can be visualized as semantic distance. How much of a leap is there between the thought and the action outcomes that back it up? Is the thought a bit of a reach...thinly stretched...tenuous? Are there many links in the chain? Is it mostly a plain description or does it sneak in assumptions and speculation? If it's a fruitful substitution of one concept for another, then what qualities are added or subtracted? Depending on the wildly varying answers to these fine-grained considerations, the semantic distance could be like an inch or 500 miles...or in-between.

The consequence is that a thought's realness must also sometimes lie between real and unreal: mid-real. To deny this possibility would be inconsistent. Yet as exotic as it seems, a mid-real thought isn't that unusual. It's not mid-real like a ghost. To start with, it could be an ordinary thought that summarizes, such as the mean age of the people at a family reunion. It's very possible that nobody's age is equal to the mean age of everybody. Nevertheless, it manages to represent the group as a whole through a method that's transparent and clear-cut.

Someone may point out that summarizing thoughts are obviously real because they're not mere fantasies. The problem with that argument is that not only fantasies but metaphorical communication in general is capable of conveying real meanings; these meanings are simply emotions and analogies rather than bare facts. The dramatic thought "I couldn't take another step" is more expressive of current foot pain frustration than the reality of complete leg exhaustion. The thought is therefore mid-real. Its obvious exaggeration is less connected to the superficial meaning of the sentence than to the the communicator's real state of mind. The semantic distance is a longer scenic journey. Grand fictional narratives can be mid-real in a loose sense also. Whether it's a talking animal fable or a dramatization of true events, the accompanying message or theme that it carries is precisely the part of it that's more real.

However, narrowing focus onto purely literal thoughts isn't a surefire escape from mid-real status. Too many complications crop up. For example, a straight line from a cause to an effect isn't always the case; many factors can affect one thing simultaneously. In these situations, the naive thought "my favorite single factor is enough to thoroughly explain the state of the complex thing" is neither strictly real nor strictly unreal. It's just mid-real because the factor is surrounded by others, and its own very real effect is partial. I'm reminded of thoughts about diet correctness. Both a person's body and the items they ingest are highly complex. It's tempting to pick a dietary factor and embrace the thought that it's the one real cause of desirable (...or undesirable) physical welfare. Then the thinker is freed from the burden of admitting that the factor's level of control might be greatly modified by the presence or absence of other factors: how the food is prepared, what else is ingested at the same time, personal sensitivities, how much of the food is eaten, and the time of day. But the topic isn't hopeless. Well-grounded (albeit boring) dietary recommendations abound. One or more minor improvements are better than none.

While the messiness of realities can lead to certain thoughts being mid-real, the messiness of actions can too. The truth is that actions' outcomes are routinely imperfect. Besides the inherent limits of all feasible actions, there might be some kind of unpredictable interference, or natural degrading of tools (our own aging sense organs qualify), or an outcome that mimics another. No matter the root causes, honesty calls for the language of probability and range. "The reality is 60% likely to be in the narrow range 300 to 800, and 95% likely to be in the wide range 50 to 1200." Regardless of the amount of precision—or the "numbers" being gut feelings—the result is that the connected thoughts are colored mid-real. Fortunately, of course, mid-real thoughts are valuable anyway for planning. Flexible plans can be constructed to succeed based on the whole range. A mid-real all-or-nothing situation is less manageable, but knowledge of the probability is at least good information.

Lastly, thoughts can be mid-real all by themselves. Some thoughts are essentially mid-real. Due to the thought's construction, the supposedly supporting actions actually can't settle the question of its realness. The issue might stem from the thought being too vague, or self-contradictory, or accommodating of any conceivable circumstance, or demanding circumstances that probably can't ever be achieved. Mid-real thoughts of this kind may be comforting or fun to play with, but allowing them a status beyond mid-real would be inconsistent with the definition applied here. Admittedly, the thoughts' creators and followers may not mean for the thoughts to be mid-real. Maybe they haven't noticed the gradual dilution of the thought they champion; now, for whatever reason, they're continuing to treat the thought the same although it's been emptied of firm assertions. Then again, that might be the characteristic that attracts them. They cannot be shown to be conclusively wrong. The downside is that they cannot be shown to be conclusively right either.

I realize I'm obligated to confront one particular objection. What if the practical, genuine existence of mid-real thoughts is only a distraction from the main question of realness rather than a valuable clue about which answers are serious? Did I start out by skipping too casually over the terms "thought", "action", "outcome", and of course "realities"? If the subtle difficulties of mid-real thoughts were escaped, what would the ultimate source of realness be? Unfortunately, my response is to concede that I offer no escape. Those terms are indeed circular (interdependent). Thoughts are events in the brain. The judgment of connections between thoughts and actions happens in the brain but so does the judgment of which realities are in harmony with which outcomes. Thoughts are approximations of realities but realities are only represented in the brain by thoughts. ("I'm 70% sure I see the back of Bill's head across the room" is a thought.) The hypothetical actions to execute in order to verify thoughts originate as thoughts. The thoughts can't be infallibly real because the actions need to tie them to realities. Even the realities can't be infallibly real because realities are in the form of sometimes-incorrect thoughts. The actions can't be infallible because of the flaws that have been explained. No single component is enough to be an ultimate source of progress toward realness. The path requires a team effort. Though, on occasion, the teamwork might resemble a melee as realities force thoughts to change or shatter.  

in the eye of the decoder

The saying goes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, what if a symbol's meaning is in the eye of the decoder?

Significant philosophical disagreements stem not only out of holding differing ideas but also out of holding differing degrees of interpretation of the same ideas. That's why beliefs frequently come in strong/hard versions versus weak/soft versions. Surprisingly, the distinction between the strong and weak interpretation of "meaning is in the eye of the decoder" indicates a lot about someone's whole philosophy. If two people are divided on this, they're probably divided on more too. 

The weak interpretation should be undeniable: meaning is affected by the decoder fairly often. They're part of the context, and any single symbol's perceived meaning can be greatly modified by whatever context it's in. For instance, the meaning of "boot" to UK listeners can be unlike its meaning to US listeners. Or words that are offensive to one society can be relatively less offensive in another. Or a film that enchants one viewer can be dumbfounding to another; meanwhile its writer and director might have had another intent altogether.

However, in my view—and in the view of countless other thinkers now and in the past—the relationship runs deeper. I side with the stronger interpretation: the meaning is literally in the decoder (...just not in the eye). It's an event of a decoder. This event is the meaning's real essence (locus). And it probably occurs a multitude of times in a multitude of decoders, unless the meaning truly is novel. The converse is that a symbol without a decoder cannot have meaning.

Linear B is an illuminating case. It's a puzzling and old form of writing that was discovered by archaeologists. It wasn't well-understood at first, and several insights led to success some years afterward. In order to be consistent with my view, I'm forced to assert that all the tablets of Linear B didn't have real meanings for an extended period. Bluntly put, once the original writers/readers all died there weren't meanings for centuries, until the breakthroughs that enabled scholars to translate the symbols. Of course, they had excellent reasons to expect that they could reconstruct coherent meanings eventually. The source markings had the characteristics of language elements; they repeated in lengthy sequences but not in an unchanging or a random pattern.

Despite how it appears, distinguishing "they found the meaning" and "they reconstructed a meaning" isn't pointless hair-splitting. If someone objects to the idea that the meaning itself exists purely in the decoder at the time of decoding, then they face a deluge of sensible follow-up questions. Where else is the meaning? How is it created and destroyed? Does it move or metamorphose or duplicate? Why can it be perceived differently?

Because these questions revolve around the metaphysics of the objector's alternative notion of meaning, their answers reveal whatever stuff they prefer to tack onto physical reality. Again, this is a striking contrast to simply accepting that meaning is an event of the decoder. Then everything involved can be matter alone and standard physical phenomena. The meaning consists of the state of the decoder's matter after the task of decoding has changed it.

In effect, symbols are like the steps to follow to shape the decoder into an internal arrangement that embodies the meaning. At a low level they function like pressures, sometimes quite subtle, on the motions/physics of particular segments. Having the ability to elaborately shift in response to symbols is how something qualifies to be a decoder. Even decoding is transcoding, in which the result's new code is the inner code for meaning used by the decoder's substance.

The crux, previously mentioned, is that the symbols are matter, the path that the symbols take to the decoder is a path taken by matter or energy, e.g. waves of sound, and the consequences of the received symbols in the decoder happen in matter. This overall picture has obvious appeal to people whose views leave out popular supernatural concepts such as souls and eternal realms. It's relatively less common to stubbornly combine an irreligious stance with a metaphysical understanding of meaning. One possible fusion, which echoes panpsychism, is that matter in general has a "mind property" in addition to its detectable properties.

On the other hand, regardless of the number of issues avoided when meaning doesn't have an extra-special kind of existence, the important issue of telling apart subjectivity and objectivity becomes a little problematic. How can meaning ever be objective at all if it's the subjects' matter? The challenging answer is that it's certainly not by default. Greater levels of objectivity are progressively earned through diligent work to connect meanings to objects rather than only subjects.

Thus the meanings that are most objective are precisely those that have been most thoroughly backed by such work. Ideally the full details of the work are then communicated and recorded so that everyone may judge how much objectivity has been earned. The meaning of "the nation of Suriname is north of the nation of Uruguay" is considered highly objective because recent maps are plentiful, trustworthy, and in unwavering consensus. For this reason the action of viewing a South America map verifies that the meaning is tied into objective reality, regardless of how many subjects the meaning is formed in at any moment. If a meaning can be reliably applied in relevant actions, then it's objective enough. It doesn't need a mystical external abode. The metaphorical eye of the decoder suffices.