You decide what is real. You also decide what is not real. Based on all the usual suspects... heredity, life experiences, social programming... Blah, Blah, Blah... Jus' Sayin'

You decide what is real. — Dymora

Me?


Ok, you don't exist.

Real is the opposite of what is "fake". So one must first ask, "what is fake?" The answer to that is subjective and based on one's beliefs, experiences, and what they assign a certain meaning or definition to. So, perhaps in a way, nothing is real. But everything can be.

If I lost a civil war, my badge and the authority it proclaims is "real"- but only to those who believe it to be, and "fake" to those who don't. Seems 'existent' and 'non-existent' are better terms to debate. Just because something 'exists' doesn't mean it's recognized or legal. Back to subjectivity. Popular opinion. Mob rule. Etcetera.

By even acknowledging me, you admitted I was real in your mind, right?

Cheat! You said I could decide!

So your

You decide what is real. — Dymora

was a lie!

BWWAAAAAAA, you got me there Big Guy. I have no answer for that logic...

In that case, welcome to the forum.

"Love is tweeting bird... that sounds awful" - Spock

Magicians perform misdirection which is also common in nature.
a mirage or rainbow can be explained
does that make them any less real?

real - not imaginary
real - not painted
real - not virtual
real - not made-up
real - not a hallucination
real - not a semblance — unenlightened

Is it a real painting, or a reproduction? Is it a real coin, or a counterfeit? Is it a real lake, or a mirage? Is it real magic, or prestidigitation? — Banno

how did we even come up with the concept of "real?" — TiredThinker

I see that @unenlightened and@Banno have already made the observations I would have based on Ordinary Language Philosophy (Austin, Wiggenstein, etc.) of the ordinary uses we have for the concept of "real", but the question remains of why did we come up with the philosophical (abstract) idea of "real"?

Now my history of philosophy is patchwork, but I offer that the common thread is the same desire that is behind "existence" or "consciousness": philosophy "came up" with its own picture of the world and its criteria for deciding what was real (thanks Plato) because of the problems created by our disappointments with our ordinary ways of judgment and certainty (such as in each case above). "We can't tell if they are lying to us? but we must know their pain? they could be a robot!" "I see tons of chairs; what is the 'meaning' of 'chair'? I don't see all of it! maybe what I see is not the 'true' chair?!" So, yes, our (philosophy's) imagination ran away with us to create, as one example, a quality opposed to the "appearance" of the world, and then that open question became an independent desire for a world/quality to be a foundation to our world --"reality".

I would only say that the skeptic's concerns about the world do reveal some truths about us: we are not ultimately in a position of knowledge toward each other. Our ideas of the structure of our world can not ensure, nor account for the failures of, communication. Philosophy's fear of the world, and desire for a solution to doubt, are not limited to philosophers alone: it is the human condition to want to reach past our partial, failing, contingent role in the world to something "real" that does not rely on us.

Real is whatever you believe is real.

The real is that which has its own independent existence and by independent existence I mean not, in any way, a construct of the mind. So, by this definition, a tree is real because a tree exists even when we don't perceive it with our minds and an imagined object like an unicorn or a hallucination of a dinosaur aren't . Such a conception of the real squares with our intuition of the real and reality.

The problem with such a notion of the real is that it can't be proven. How are we going to prove that, say, x exists despite our mind not perceiving it? To prove that x exists independent of our minds, we would need two conditions to be fulfilled:

1) we're not perceiving x with our minds

AND

2) x continues to exist despite that.

The catch is we can't fulfill condition 2 without failing to satisfy condition 1 because the only way to know x exists is by perceiving it with our minds. We can't meet the conditions necessary to prove the kind of realness I described.

That said, there's an indirect method to prove such realness - realness as existence independent of mind perceptions. There's what's consistent continuity in objects between two temporally separate mind perceptions. I have this Samsung cell phone that I'm typing this post on. It's 3:00 PM now. If I then put it in a drawer where no one, even I, can't perceive it and let it remain there for 3 hours and then retrieve it from the drawer, the cell phone clock will read 6:00 PM. This, if nothing else, shows that the cell phone continued to exist independently of my mental perception of it and kept on recording the passage of time, the 3 hours it sat in the drawer. The cell phone exhibits consistent continuity - it behaves as if it exists independent of mind perceptions, everyone's mind perceptions.