This question doesn’t make any sense, and certainly doesn’t get to the heart of the matter I believe other-wise was expressing. It seems vastly similar to the last argument we had. Language/thought is not meant to constitute reality. It is not a “creative” effort in the sense that reacting an alkaloid with HCl “creates” a salt. It is a creative effort in the sense of categorizing phenomena. To stay with physical analogies, our thought and language precipitate “the real” from the stew of phenomena (reference Hume, Kant, Husserl, and probably many others). That which is real is the result of conscious activity, rather than its underlying cause. I don’t intend this to trivialize how important “the real” is. In fact, the overwhelming tendency of language to portray reality through naive realism shows its importance rather than diminishes it. But maybe that’s just me. I don’t require a supreme being for a moral compass, and I don’t require hardcore realism to have that which is real be important (perhaps even of the highest importance).
The universe, as I believe you picture it, is not real, in the sense I use it, because it is not completely categorized, understood, etc. The universe is an abstraction. It is the sum of all possible knowledge to a physicalist, which is a standard that cannot be met. The universe, as I picture it, is real, in the sense I use it, because it is the conceptual creation that sits atop public phenomena. The universe is not “a physical object” because there is not meant to be more than one, and even if there is, there is no criteria for selection i.e. no test for membership. Even in a multi-world theory there is no unambiguous criteria for thisness. It is a word,like will or love, which superficially plays the part of an object but which is not generally a part of the grammar of objects. “The universe” is much more akin, grammatically, to “the earth” than it is to “the red ball over there.” We only deal with one, generally. We’ve never made selection criteria because the context is obvious. If you need selection criteria for the universe, you probably don’t know what “the universe” is.
Were I a physicalist, the universe being real is a matter of pure assertion, a completely trivial definition as “all known phenomena” (which I wouldn’t argue with), or outright faith. Its existence, so much as it can even be an “it,” remains outside the reach of us. Even “the visible universe” is on decidedly shakey grounds, there being plenty of objects that would not be found “visible” but which we would intend to use as criteria of thisness in selection (re: many worlds theory) like planets or other particulates.
Thankfully, I remain far from such a terse view of the real and rely instead on social phenomena to characterize such things. It is no surprise that my answer to “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” is quite simply, “yes,” because if it weren’t one could quickly suggest I had not learned what a “tree” or “sound” is. Why this suggests any metaphysics remains, as ever, far beyond my ken. I don’t mean to disparage physicalism. I’ve come to the conclusion that I truly don’t understand it. It is either trivial, or wild-assed speculation couched in the success of science and induction. Since I would not easily attribute either position to you, SentientMeat, I am left with the rather more obvious conclusion that I simply don’t understand physicalism. there remains the distinct possibility that I would even agree with it, if only it made itself clear to me. Go start an “ask the physicalist thread” if this is way too hijack.
Anyway.
You like to pose questions to your opponents. I have a question for you. If I ask you, “Does love exist?”, would you think the equivalent question is, “Is love real?” and if so, would you think another equivalent question is, “Is there some physical interaction that takes place which characterizes what we otherwise call ‘love’?” Before you answer, I want to make it clear where I stand. First, I would equate reality with existence, in such a way as to suggest (as a first approximation) that existence is some manifestation of the real. For instance, a picture of a unicorn, described as such, is real and exists, even if unicorns don’t exist like a horse exists. That is to say, seeing such a picture and stating, “That’s a unicorn pictured there,” is a perfectly legitimate and sensible sentence in its own right. (Substitute other non-existent objects at will, like the trisection of an angle by compass and unmarked straightedge.) I believe, personally, that any other requirement is a tortured way to hide from the very forces that shaped our language to say such things in the first place. But, as I say, this is my opinion, I welcome yours whether it differs or not. As far as the last question goes, I don’t find it equivalent at all, even if love could currently be described in such a way (though perhaps if such a description were commonplace, it would be equivalent!).
[…whew!..]