Comment by TheOtherHobbes
17 hours ago
It does neither. The philosophical meaning of "real" is exactly the process of exploring the various possible definitions.
And it leads to the observation that our experience of reality is not objective, not absolute, and is likely very species-specific.
A cat can sit on a laptop without understanding the laptop or the Internet. All it experiences is a warm object
Is it rational or realistic to assume we don't have analogous perceptual and conceptual limitations which - of course - we're not aware of?
> Is it rational or realistic to assume we don't have analogous perceptual and conceptual limitations
I never claimed we don't have perceptual and conceptual limitations. Indeed, recognizing that we do should make us extremely wary of "philosophical" concepts like "real" that appear to go beyond the obvious pragmatic definitions that I described, that are grounded in what we can actually do with things.
Pragmatism as a broad, basic, and reductive view of knowledge is self-refuting and incoherent. If "truth is what is useful" or "what works," you face a self-refutation problem. If you claim something is just "useful" rather than objectively true, then it has no authority. If it is claimed as objectively true, it contradicts the pragmatic premise that truth isn't a relation to reality. And what is "useful", anyhow? Is usefulness useful?