On Connotation

Connotation or denotaton? by Zach Weiner, of SMBC Comics.

By Lina Scarborough

A while ago, a friend waltzed up to me and asked: ‘What is a connotation?’ . Knowing he likes to pull my leg once in a while, I decided to humour him. ‘It is the description attached to a word’, I answered as we started walking.

After a pause for thought, he replied: ‘Ah, but when I have an object... ’ he stooped down to pick up some pebbles, ‘the words that come to mind describe the colour, the shape...’ he turned the stones between his fingers, ‘the weight’, he dropped them suddenly, ‘but not all of those are connotations’.

I paused and added, ‘Then, it’s a description that does not pertain to some thing’s physical properties’.

He looked amused and told me he had come across several definitions that were besides the point - or entirely flawed. Whether or not my definition satisfied him, he did not say.

Of course, not only objects with physical properties can have connotations. In fact, it is mostly adjectives that contain nuances. For example, the word stingy holds a negative undertone, whereas thrifty implies something akin to a virtue – someone who likes to be smart with their money. But what is this desire to find an exact label for something? What is, and why is there joy in finding the precise term for an object, a situation, an abstract feeling?

Let us define a label, or better - a term, as a chiefly one-word noun. Then a definition is a phrase which explains exactly what that label encompasses. The definition: waking up from a pleasant dream feeling contented. There is a term for that feeling – euneirophrenia.

We can define a great number of things in different manners. The only limit is our personal experience or imagination. The latter of course, poses the question whether one can imagine a feeling into existence (but that’s a whole other topic - and possibly borders on schizophrenia).

A private world

Connotations create private microcosms in romantic couples. Your partner might replace the word ‘walk ‘with ‘locomotion’ to avoid unnecessarily exciting the dog that recognizes the term ‘walkies!’ or ‘walk!’. Or, you might lightheartedly call a USB a hockey-stick, and no-one but your significant other and close family would understand what on earth you meant. The shared private language creates a sense of insiders versus outsiders and, consequently, facilitates intimacy and brings a lightheartedness to the relationship. Carol Bruess, director of family studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, says: ‘When couples have their own language rituals…they feel like they know one another in a way that others don’t, and that they have a strong connection or bond to each other.’

Connotations can also be cultural. Don’t offend a Chinese by gifting him a watch – the Chinese symbol for watch (送钟, sòng zhōng) has the same pronunciation as [attending] a funeral! Giving somebody a watch implies that you are patiently waiting for their death - not a message you want to convey...

Some cultural connotations are oddly specific. Let us again consult the Chinese for inspiration: Do not give somebody in China a green hat - it is a metaphor for man’s wife having been unfaithful (帶綠帽, dài lǜ mào, with green hat). But why specifically green? A turtle is green, and turtles hide their heads in their shells, so calling someone a ‘turtle’ is deemed offensive since it's also equivalent to calling someone a coward!

Using a certain connotation can also help one identify with a community, fulfilling the need to belong. In African-American communities one doesn’t call a friend ‘mate’ like the British or Australians do, one calls a friend ‘brother’, or simply bro. Such cultural connotations are one reason it is so hard to learn a foreign language. Or rather, why it is so hard not to make embarrassing faux pas when speaking as a beginner.

Even in your own native language and communities, people fight to have certain words de-stigmatized or entirely made redundant. This is particularly applicable to the historically more vulnerable members of society. No one would dream of calling a disabled person a retard nowadays unless they were deliberately seeking to insult.

In parts of the world women have started pointing out double-standards that occur when labelling the same behaviour. Perhaps a boy is praised for taking initiative and being a leader, whereas a girl might be scolded for the same and labeled as ‘bossy’. Where does one draw the line between being steadfast, tenacious, or stubborn? How does one distinguish between meticulous or picky? Is it not usually somewhat subjective as opposed to universal?

The neuroscientist Terence Deacon has said: ‘The way that language represents objects, events, and relationships provides a uniquely powerful economy of reference…It entirely shapes our thinking and the ways we know the physical world.’ Building on this, I could say that the reason it is satisfying to find the exact word to convey what I mean, as opposed to using a phrase or long-winded definition (this in itself needs a term!), is because it creates a sense of power. What I can define, I can examine, influence, control. Hence associations around words are the building blocks around spiritual or emotional depth and intellectual growth.

If I understand that what I feel is called leucocholy - a state of feeling that accompanies preoccupation with trivial and insipid diversions – I know how to find a more productive pursuit to ease my feelings of anxiousness instead of faffing around (as the British say). The origin of leucocholy dates back to the 18th century, and literally means ‘white bile’ and is opposed to melancholy, which is ‘black bile’.  In this way, connotation therefore reveals something about our psyche. Freud may have realized this when he started using so-called ‘free association’ as a method for diagnosing and alleviating what was going on in his patient’s unconscious processes.

My friend later informed me that he had found a definition of connotation that he liked: ‘Connotation is the illusion of denotation’, he said.

And yet - this same illusion is the reason that poetry can exist, and is what gives depth and flavour to our language and our lives.

Soap Operas in Africa

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Posters for Kenyan and South African Soap Operas

Who are the influencers in Africa? The politicians? Preachers? Educators? Revolutionaries?

There are some we may seldom think of: the producers of Africa’s soap operas. According to Discovery Networks, the average TV viewer in South Africa watches a massive 4.5 hours a day – a large part of which is taken up with soap operas. Statistics show that South Africa’s top five soap operas have about five billion views a year.  It is, according to journalist Tiema Muindi, ‘habitual viewing’.

Now before any person or group can influence another, there need to be certain conditions in place. It is generally agreed that people are motivated – not only motivated, but induced to act – when they hold up a picture of the world to the world itself, and there find a difference or disjoint. Psychologist Richard Gregory describes it as finding the ‘unexpected’, and the philosopher Willard Quine adds: the expected which fails to happen.

I look from my kitchen window, to see my little girl with her face down in the grass. This is not what I expected to see – and I spring into action. Or I did not expect to see a woman assaulted on the street, or a child malnourished. Again, I spring into action. To put it simply, psychologists say that our behaviour is controlled by mental models – and this, said the philosopher Plato, spells danger. Show people things which change their expectations, and you distract and destabilise all of society. Or so he thought.

It would be important to know, therefore, whether Africa’s soap operas give Africa a picture of the world which is different to the world itself. We are all aware of the shock-factor of soap operas in general: conflicts, intrigue, and the breaking of cultural taboos. Yet in Africa, there is something that would seem to loom larger than any of this. We see it in virtually all of the soap opera posters – which are the 'door', so to speak, to the soap operas themselves. It is affluence. Designer dresses, tailored suits, expensive smartphones, sumptuous settings, and more.

We may open this door and enter in. Here we find, again, affluence. Meals in fine restaurants, fitted kitchens, fast cars, expensive whisky, and so on – not to speak of the expensive pursuits of the characters themselves.

Yet in the real world which is Africa, a vast number of people live in poverty.  By some statistics, 33% in Nigeria, 42% in Kenya, and 55% in South Africa. In reality, one sees shacks made with wood and iron and empty agricultural sacks – overcrowded trains, dusty streets, and children playing with wire toys. Given this context, how might the soap operas influence Africa? There are various possibilities:

• They do not significantly shape a continent’s views and expectations – they are merely soap operas, after all. This seems unlikely.

• They may lead people to believe that Africa really looks the way that it is presented in the soap operas. May we then blame the wealthier classes, for failing to recognise or understand the desperate struggles of the poor?

• The soap operas may dull the senses and desires of the masses – leading them to feel that they are absorbed by the fantasy world they see, to become one with it, as it were.

• They may lead viewers to expect the life that they see on TV. And what happens then? Do viewers make these values their own highest good – old colonial values, one might add? Or do they grieve within, to see that they fall so far short of the dream? Or are they motivated to strive for more?

One may ask, too: what would it do to people’s expectations, if they were to view more realistic soap operas? Would these conscientise societies more effectively as to their real plight? Would they lead people to be more realistic in their plans and strategies – with their feet now firmly planted on the ground? Or would they lower their expectations, or degrade them?

Few seem to have given it much thought. Both academic research and popular articles are very thin on the ground. A rare paper on How Do Soap Operas Affect the Poor? Experiences of Turkish Women, by Turkish academics Aras Ozgun et al, concludes that ‘we need to understand the issue from the perspectives of the vulnerable’. There are troubling signs. In particular, in most cases in their study, soap operas led to ‘self-imposed alienation’ amongst the poor, including feelings of shame, anger, dissatisfaction, and powerlessness.

The Myths That Shape Us

The Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, Italy

Posted by Tessa Den Uyl

The shadow of Benvenuto Cellini’s sculpture of Perseus holding Medusa’s head is cast triumphantly on the wall. And was it not also for the shield that the goddess Athena gave to Perseus, that he could sever Medusa’s head? Is such reflection a kind of indirect contact, that tells us something about our own eyes?

The myth tells that everything which came into direct contact with Medusa’s sight petrified, even after her beheading. As miraculously, from her bleeding neck she gave birth to two other creatures, Pegasus and Chrysaor. For the idea of myth is to continue, indeed the force of Greek tragedy reflects on those who have grown up in its shadow, until this present day.   

Such stories have shaped generations, and we ourselves are shaped by stories we may not even have read or heard of. Romanticism, for instance, didn’t take place in Africa, which partly explains how love is perceived within a completely different coding in the West. Similarly, Indian philosophy stimulates a distinct view on life and the Taoist another.

Humankind has searched for meaning, and meaning stems from what happened before us, whether completely invented or not. Through our eyes, we see a past which we are very often unable to recognise, and without recognition, how can we deal with it? Often we see as in a mirror, although we do not see the origin of the image.

When Athena later depicts the decapitated head of Medusa on her chest (the same image is portrayed on the shields of heroic warriors), this image served to frighten the enemy, and surely eyes have become symbolically charged with expressions for us. ‘She looked at me as if I should drop dead.’

You might mistrust someone for the look of one’s eyes more than their words or actions. And friendly eyes make you feel comfortable? Such impressions are generally not much our own creation. They were passed on from generation to generation. Terror is similarly conveyed, and the Ancient Greeks have been masters in paving the path.

We have woven our lives in oblivion. When we seek to find meaning, the effort is to understand what is there. And what is there is filled with symbols that seemingly hand us meaning. We become immensely stimulated by a specific agglomeration of symbols that we make meaningful while their randomness is overlooked.

We give deep attention to a particular combination of images and thoughts whose impressions are immediately accessible to us. Certain gestures, phrases, ideas, and emotions are highlighted which we do remember indeed. Everything we do remember detaches from all other experiences, yet all together they weave the tapestry of our lives. This is the complexity of memory.

Everybody builds up memory in different combinations. What we keep consciously present in our mind tells us how to react, how to pick up a concept, how we feel. We react on what our mind and body have memorised, though not all that is memorised is recalled.

Then, to see our memory as a minor part of a vaster landscape which is not remembered does not sound that illogical. Nor does the notion that oblivion includes everything from which we do not draw conclusions, although the tragedy might just be that this is not that true.

Turning back to the picture above, Benvenuto Cellini’s sculpture exposes a rather violent historic representation. Likewise the other exhibited sculptures by various artists. Today their elevated greatness in the history of art confuses famous names with underlying stories which are represented within the sculptures. The symbolism which reaches out to offer us insight into our current being, ‘a touch into oblivion’, is generally overlooked.

Today, a fair amount of literature and film marches on the key element of tragedy to entertain us. Creating tragedy seems to come naturally to us. Yet indirectly we give meaning to something that was created long before we were there.

The shadow in the picture reminds us how reflection indirectly connects us to oblivion, how oblivion can make us act, and is triumphantly present, silently exhibiting its influence. As this statue by Cellini moves far beyond its time, backward as forward, it is properly charged with oblivion. And this is the art of seeing, the force of myth, that we all carry along.

Picture Post #45: Undesired and Eliminated

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl

Paris - France 2018

The more imagination you put into the display of products for a shop window, the more people will remember it. Here the dead rats are eye catching indeed, aside from the large golden letters announcing: Disinfestation of Harmful Animals.

We remove the unwanted, to justify our own characteristics? 

No animal knows about our bounds, nor do we know about theirs. Living along together, this very often human being simply cannot. Though all those unwanted creatures need an earth to live on. 

Perhaps when these undesired beings are there, we might have something they need? And we need them, whether we like to see them or not. It’s a fair contract, made by nature.

The problem does not originate in nature, but it is a problem how nature will survive with us, and this is one of the most outstanding contradictions in the nature of humankind.

The Scales of Justice

Lady Justice, by Mimi

Posted by Jeremy Dyer

The beauty of the rose
Is balanced by the thorn
That's the way the story goes,
Right from the day you're born.

No fields of joy without an end
No Christmas cracking time
No party day around the bend
To look back on your prime.

On the other schizo hand
My childhood wasn't bad
Or so the therapist said
When he held my hand.

Eons ago the lords of glory
Ruled the righteous earth.
Now a twisted murder story
Tells us what we're worth.

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They say a cynic's never wrong
He can't be disappointed.
But is his view a correct sum
Of what life has anointed?

Shatter me in your eyes
Consume me with your lips
Find me love that never dies
That's not from movie clips.

Am I happy? What a question!
Please don't query life's direction.
Is it fate or circumstance,
Or am I my own providence?

Am I trapped or am I free?
Am I the me I want to be?
The urgent answer that we seek
Won't be on tv this week.

The Idea of Freedom in the Modern World

By Simon Thomas

Soul Freedom Chained, by Khalil Gibran

Freedom is a magnificent idea, yet it is much misunderstood. Some claim freedom in the idea that you should be able to express yourself as you wish, without restraint (which is positive freedom).  It is the idea of mind over matter, reality over unreality, which has its roots in René Descartes.

Descartes takes it further, noting that there is a materialistic type of freedom where you have the means to meet all your material needs (which is negative freedom). Maslow’s hierarchy gives us an idea of the needs concerned. If a person feels that their need for security, food, shelter, and some creature comforts are met, then they can live a satisfactory and contented life. It is true, therefore, that the fulfillment of such needs is a type of freedom.

However, that is only half the story. Jean Jacques Rousseau put it aptly when he said, ‘Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.’ Rousseau‘s starting point is that man is inherently good, and therefore freedom is possible – provided he is not unduly restrained by unjust laws to protect the wealthy. Yet common sense, and experience of the modern world, seem to indicate the opposite of Rousseau's Utopian idea. It seems a fallacy that people are inherently good. If they were inherently good, they would not enforce their will on others, and thereby enslave them – in Rousseau’s terms, put them in chains.

Now there is another type of freedom, which is more a matter of the mind. Philosopher Richard Rorty said that what you put in your mind – which is, the way you interpret the world – that’s what there is. Therefore if you have a subservient mind-set, you cannot be free – regardless of the kind of liberty your accumulated wealth brings you. He continues by saying that the only true freedom we can enjoy is metaphysical in nature, because humanity cannot find lasting meaning purely in material needs being met.

This is exactly the mind-set we are contending with in society today – and does not to resound with previous generations. I have recently been talking to people who were children during World War 2. The mind-set out of that era was by and large, work hard, fight for liberty and justice, and accumulate wealth, no matter the personal cost to home and family. We have seen the effects of this unfold since the 1960s till the present time: rebellion against authority by younger generations, and ever increasing hostility against law and order.

Breaking free from law and order in society has never been a workable idea. Anarchy has never produced freedom. Instead, it has produced tyrants and addicts. Neil Postman, in his novel 'Entertaining ourselves to death', makes the point that our society has produced people with a mind-set which needs to be entertained all the time. Yet this produces addiction to visual media, harmful cravings for the next high, or more recently, cyber addiction.  Again, there is no freedom in that.

Related to this, the notion has become epidemic that having what you cannot normally afford will bring lasting satisfaction. Thus people get themselves into inordinate amounts of debt – and often, instead of freedom, it brings financial ruin. Having said this, however, it is not just a problem of the individual, but of nations. There is a huge debt bubble – which, while it caused the demise of some leading banks in 2008, was just cosmetically treated.

On point with these examples is that freedom in the Western world is a fallacy, because it is built on an idea that we are entitled to have whatever we want, regardless of how we get it – and regardless of those who are injured along the way.

Freedom, as Rorty said, is metaphysical in nature. A person can be in dire circumstances, yet still be free. The martyr Polycarp, of distant memory, said this to his persecutors when they demanded his freedom of religion: ‘You can take my life if you wish, my property if you want, but you cannot make me deny the faith that saved me.’

That is freedom. It is the grand idea that freedom is only attainable when you let go of the idea of materialistic happiness, and learn to be content in whatever circumstance you find yourself. As the sages of old often said, ‘Bloom where you are planted.’ In this is freedom: to be at peace with yourself.

Are ‘Designer Offspring’ Our Destiny?

The promise of gene editing and designer offspring may prove irresistible

Posted by Keith Tidman

It’s an axiom that parents aspire to the best for their children — from good health to the best of admired traits. Yet our primary recourse is to roll the dice in picking a spouse or partner, hoping that the resulting blend of chromosomes will lead to offspring who are healthy, smart, happy, attractive, fit, and a lot else. Gene editing, now concentrated on medical applications, will offer ways to significantly raise the probability of human offspring manifesting the traits parents seek: ‘designer offspring’. What, then, are the philosophical and sociological implications of using gene editing to influence the health-related wellbeing of offspring, as well as to intervene into the complex traits that define those offspring under the broader rubric of human enhancement and what we can and ought to do?

‘All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?’

— Immanuel Kant

The idea is to alter genes for particular outcomes, guided by previous mapping of every gene in the human body. To date, these selected outcomes have targeted averting or curing disorders, like cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s, and sickle-cell disease, stemming from gene mutations. As such, one of the central bioethical issues is for parents to freely decide which disorders are ‘unacceptable’ and thus to prevent or fix through gene editing. The public, and the medical field, already make similar medical decisions all the time in the course of treatments: stem cells to grow transplantable organs, AI-controlled robotic surgery, and vaccinations, among innumerable others. The aim is to avoid or cure health disorders, or minimally to mitigate symptoms.

As a matter of societal norms, these decisions reflect people’s basic notions about the purpose of health science. Yet, if informed parents knowingly choose to give birth to, say, an infant with Down syndrome, believing philosophically and sociologically that such children can live happy, productive lives and are a ‘blessing’, then as a matter of ethics, humanitarianism, and sovereign agency they retain that right. A potential wrinkle in the reasoning is that such a child itself has no say in the decision. Which might deny the child her ‘natural right’ not to go through a lifetime with the quality-of-life conditions the disorder hands her. The child is denied freely choosing her own destiny: the absence of consent traditionally associated with medical intervention. As a corollary, the aim is not to deprive society of heterogeneity; sameness is not an ideal. That is not equivalent, however, to contending that a particular disorder must remain a forever variation of the human species.

‘We are going from being able to read our genetic code to the ability to write it. This gives us the … ability to do things never contemplated before’

— Craig Venter, writing in ‘Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature’.

Longer term, people won’t be satisfied limited to health-related measures. They will turn increasingly to more-complex traits: cognition (intelligence, memory, comprehension, talent, etc.), body type (eye and hair colour, height, weight, mesomorphism, etc.), athleticism (fast, strong, agile, endurance, etc.), attractiveness, gender, lifespan, and personality. The ‘designer offspring’, that is, mentioned above. Nontrivially, some changes may be inheritable, passed from one generation to the next. This will add to the burden of getting each intervention right, in a science that’s briskly evolving. Thus, gene editing will not only give parents offspring that conform to their ideals; also, it may alter the foundational features of our very species. These transhumanist choices will give rise to philosophical and sociological issues with which society will grapple. Claims that society is skating close to eugenics —a practice rightly discredited as immoral — as well as specious charges of ‘playing God’ and assertions of dominion may lead to select public backlash, but not incurably so to human-enhancing programs.

Debates will confront thorny issues: risk–reward balance in using gene editing to design offspring; comparative value among alternative human traits; potential inequality in access to procedures, exacerbating classism; tipping point between experimentation and informed implementation; which embryos to carry to term and childhood; cultural norms and values that emerge from designer offspring; individual versus societal rights; society’s intent in adopting what one might call genetic engineering, and the basis of family choice; acceleration and possible redirection of the otherwise-natural evolution of the human species; consequences of genetic changes for humanity’s future; the need for ongoing programmes to monitor children born as a result of gene editing; and possible irreversibility of some adverse effects. It won't be easy.

‘It is an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical … not deterministic’ 

— Richard Dawkins

The promise of gene editing and designer offspring (and by extension, human enhancement writ large) may prove irresistible and irreversible — our destiny. To light the way, nations and supranational institutions should arrange ongoing collaboration among philosophers, scientists, the humanities, medical professionals, theologians, policymakers, and the public. Self-regulation is not enough. Oversight is key, where malleable guidelines take account of improved knowledge and procedures. What society accepts (or rejects) today in human gene editing and human enhancements may well change dramatically from decade to decade. Importantly, introducing gene editing into selecting the complex traits of offspring must be informed and unrushed. Overarching moral imperatives must be clear. Yet, as parents have always felt a compelling urge and responsibility to advantage their children in any manner possible, eventually they may muse whether genetic enhancements are a ‘moral obligation’, not just a ‘moral right’.

Picture Post 44: The Lifeboats

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Martin Cohen

      

‘Life Is a Shipwreck, But We Must Not Forget To Sing in the Lifeboats’.

It’s a great thought, and can be found on the internet attributed to Voltaire, but it doesn’t sound quite like the great French philosopher, and indeed Garson O’Toole is probably right to point at a later book editor commenting on the world view behind Voltaire’s bitterly witty story, Candide.

Here in these images surely, the passengers do not sing, but seem instead curiously withdrawn, as if trying to shut their eyes to an awful sight. And indeed that might be just what they were doing, as these plucky little lifeboats were chugging away from a Titanic, sinking and still packed with thousands of desperate passengers. Second and Third Class ones, that is. For the real scandal of the Titanic was not that it sank, not even that its Captain was so dilatory in asking for assistance (or the boats around in offering any) but that the social conventions of the era implied that most of the lifeboats were for First Class passengers only, with no mixing. Though to be sure, the small number of officers and  richer passengers left on the boat did mix with the other passangers later... in the cold grey waters of the Atlantic.

Facts-wise, then, the fact is that the first six lifeboats were at less than one third loaded capacity, and the passengers were only First Class passengers or… Ship’s Officers. Six underloaded boats like the ones in the picture, which had a capacity for 40 persons meant 150 passangers drowned to defend the niceties  of wealth.

That said, Captain Edward Smith was on the bridge at 2.13am, seven minutes before the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, and went down with the ship.

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Read more…

http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html#life

Doublethink 27 - Eugenics

 

Pi is pleased to present another bonus episode of

 Youngjin Kang's Doublethink

What Truly Exists?

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Magritte’s iconic painting of a man looking in a mirror,
reminds us that the world we perceive is not real,
but rather constructed

A core question of ontology, or theories about the nature of being and existence—and perhaps its most pressing question from a practical point of view—is which individuals or 'things' are really real. What truly exists? It seems that there are three broad possibilities:

• material entities alone (which is materialism),
• mental entities alone (which is idealism),
• or both (which is dualism).

However it is very difficult, as the cognitive scientist Aaron Sloman has put it, to distinguish between ‘real existents’ and ‘useful fictions’—or for that matter, useless ones. As philosophy professor Simon Blackburn notes:

‘Everything you can think of has at some time or another been declared to be a fiction by philosophers bent on keeping a firm check on reality—among them matter, force, energy, causes, physical laws, space, time, possibilities, numbers, infinity, selves, freedom of the will, the will itself, desires, beliefs, identity, things, properties, society, language, and money.’

Intuitively, we feel that what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch—or perceive in any way with our senses—is real. Yet what are we to make of things we do not perceive—either because, momentarily, we find that they lie beyond our senses, or because they are what we call ‘constructs'—compound ideas which may lack empirical evidence?

The problem strikes close to home. Take the one hundred most commonly used nouns in English. The first on the list is ‘time’. You cannot see it or touch it or anything like that. The second is ‘year’. The same applies. The third on the list is ‘people’. Now here is something we can see and touch—at least when those people happen to be around. The fourth term, though, ‘way’, is both real and unreal. And so, depending on how we categorise these nouns, fully half of them may not be ‘real’ at all.

It would be helpful to start with the simplest distinction—namely that which we make between real things we experience directly, and real things we do not.

Imagine that I am cycling down a narrow cycle track under some coconut palms. I see the world in front of me as I go—but do not see the world behind me. I saw it a moment ago—a thicket of breadfruit trees, and children playing. But I know that they are there. I saw them, heard them, smelled them. Besides, I could easily stop my bicycle now and look back to confirm it.

In what sense, then, are those things there, which are now behind me? After all, I do not directly perceive them.

We may conduct a simple thought experiment.

Imagine that, as I ride my bicycle under the coconut trees, we switch off my senses and freeze this moment in time. Without my senses, the perceived and the unperceived look largely the same in my brain—namely, arrangements of synapses in a vast network of neurons.

In my brain, then, there is little difference between the seen and the unseen (or the heard and the unheard, and so on). Both exist in the vast neural network which is or contains the mind. Everything, whether real or imaginary, ends up there. The question now is not so much whether my mind contains things perceived or unperceived. In the first case, my senses are activated; in the second, they are not—but in both cases, they are as real to me as anything possibly can be.

This becomes important now for the more vexing question as to how we are to understand constructs. There is more to riding my bicycle than what I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. If there were not, I would be wobbling on my bicycle without anything left to orientate me:

Does this outing fit my purpose? Did I steal this bicycle? Do I need a passport here? Should I turn around now? And so on. None of these ‘surplus’ things—purpose, ownership, citizenship, and so on—is immediately real to me, yet all of them are vital. My mind is filled, not only with the things that I see, or saw a moment ago—but with many things which are in a sense unreal. One could say, things which are lacking empirical evidence, although in every case, they can be tested in some way.

Are these constructs real? In fact they are real—at least, as real as the coconut trees before me, and the breadfruit trees and the children behind me, given the fact that I arrange them, too, in my mind—each as a distinct concept with a unique label. As such, they do not fundamentally differ from those things which ‘exist’.

It would be wise for us to pause for a moment. We know well that we are capable, as human beings, of thinking of fictions which are not so. On the one hand, fictitious concepts—say magic spells, or the quintessence—on the other hand, fictitious entities—say the planet Vulcan, or fairies and gnomes. Sometimes, too, we believe that our fictions exist—or that they will exist at some time in the future.

Yet the separation of the real and the fictitious would seem to be fairly straightforward. ‘Real’ things correspond with the reality we perceive, while pure fictions do not. Does time therefore exist—or identity or society or any one of hundreds of thousands of constructs there are? Given that they correspond with the reality we perceive, we can only say yes.

The ultimate question is, does God exist? Given the right conditions, the answer to this, too, could be yes. The ‘right conditions’ for God’s existence would be threefold:

• that he is not purely ideational
• that the concept ‘God’ corresponds with the reality we perceive
• and that this concept is not invoked arbitrarily.

Or put it this way—for God to exist, there needs to be something permanent in our experience which necessitates him.