Thanks. (I was at work when I asked, so not chasing links.)
It sounds so very much like subject & predicate, the small, boring result of a long and tangled history, I'm sure.
There is a sort of example that comes to mind that only fits this paradigm in a particular way.
Say I have three pretty straight sticks, and I arrange them to make a pretty good triangle on the ground. Does the triangle exist? Surely. Does it exist in the same way the sticks do? ― Apparently not. The sticks can be arranged in other ways, and remain relatively invariant throughout the process of arranging them, but the triangle ― well, the triangle only exists just so. It is apparently somewhat more ephemeral than the sticks.
One other point about this "arrangement of things" sort of example: no matter how they are arranged, not one of the sticks can bear the predicate "triangular". You might say that a given stick "becomes" an edge, or an edge of a triangle, something like that, and that's interesting. (What happens to the edges when you pick up the sticks?) But to get something that "is a triangle" you have to first take the collection of sticks altogether; you have to grant that "these three sticks" is the sort of thing that can take predicates like "make up a triangle". And what kind of reality does "these three sticks" have?
So shall we say that the collection of sticks and the triangle made from them have less reality than the individual sticks do? I could see it. It's hard for me to see why I'd want to say it, rather than make the specific spatial and temporal distinctions I can make, but there's something to it.
Anyway, none of this is about modes or predicates and what sort of existence they might have. Collections and arrangements have a different shadowy sort of existence. But they're all clearly related too.
When I dream of something — Moliere
(There's a thread over there about non-existent objects, but I haven't looked at it. ―
No, there's two of them.)
Sometimes workbooks for children have a kind of puzzle in them, where you're given a little group of pictures and are told to put them in order to make a story. They often rely on thermodynamics ― you're supposed to know that broken pieces of a vase don't rise from the ground (defying gravity as well) and assemble themselves into a vase on the table.
Let's call the world where that sort of thing doesn't happen "the real world." If you tend to tell yourself and others stories where that sort of thing
does happen, then I'd be tempted to say your world is "less real" than mine. And insofar as people's beliefs are real, or at least a useful way of categorizing their behavior, and insofar as their behavior has consequences in the real world, I'd be tempted to say that people are capable of increasing or decreasing the reality of situations they are involved in. (It's like the response to "facts are theory-laden": let's make sure our theories are fact-laden.)
If we start with social groups and their behavior ― instead of starting with epistemology or cognitive science, and whatever conclusions we draw from that ― why shouldn't we make good use of words like "realistic" and "unrealistic"? Some people bring more reality to our discussions and our decisions; some people sap reality from our deliberations, lead us step by step into a fantasy world that is just less real, even though the actions we take in our fantasy world ― taking a stand against the baddies ― may have counterparts in the real world, like locking up real Japanese-Americans.
I also have in mind the sort of thing you can see in Peter Jackson's film
Heavenly Creatures, where the characters begin to slip back and forth between the real world and their own fantasy world. We all do a bit of this, and it seems quite natural to put
how much we do it on a scale. Mistaking a windmill on the horizon for a grain elevator is one thing; mistaking it for a dragon is another. At least grain elevators are real, and windmills and grain elevators are both members of "rural towers". But dragons ...