What is the difference between “to exist” vs “to be real”?

Question

What does it mean to say something exists and something is real? And what is the difference if there is any? For example, take a software program. Is it more fitting to say that it exists or that it is real?

Answer 1

For most purposes, everyday and philosophical, reality and existence, 'real' and 'exists', are interchangeable. There's a distinction of sorts in Meinong. What exists, does so in space/ time. But we might also want to say that numbers, meanings, propositional contents are real but 'subsist'. The common meaning of propositions - that between 'The dog is red' and 'Le chien est rouge' - the difference could be real but only subsist, not exist in space/ time. It is real in the sense that it can be the subject of true sentences or statements.

To (try to) prevent a tidal wave of criticism let me say that I am aware of the difficulties that beset the putative reality of common meanings, numbers and the rest. But if (IF) they are real, as can be non-absurdly argued, then they do not occupy space/ time and so we have a distinction between the existent and the real.

Answer 2

For most "ordinary" people, and even some philosophers, "to be real" and "to exist" are the same thing. But not for all philosophers. Plato (and his followers, the Neoplatonics) famously believed that the things of the ordinary world, which might arguably be said to "exist" were nevertheless not "real" as he defined realness. Other idealists like Bishop Berekely, might arguably be viewed as having similar views, whether they expressed them in those terms or not.

Even from this point of view, however, it's far from clear if the software program is more or less "real" than other things that "exist." It has no soul, which argues against it being real in Platonic terms. It is abstract and conceptual, however, and those are qualities strongly associated with Platonic realness.

Answer 3

The distinction is sometimes cast as one between fundamental and derivative entities. Everything exists, but some things might not really exist. For example, you might hold that the ultimate constituents of reality are the entities posited by fundamental physics. Everything else is some complex of these things, and is not fundamental.

Although views like this are common, casting it in terms of what “really exists” is less common. The most prominent proponent of such a view is Kit Fine in his “The Question of Realism”. “To be real” would be to exist in reality. (Though I don’t believe he holds the strict physicalism described above.)

Answer 4

Great question. This question is best addressed with an answer that "best" separates, differentiates, and clarifies their differences. I use the word "best" because I will be the first to admit the answer I am providing here is not formal, conventional, nor even established. This is my interpretation and I not presenting it for sake of argument. I offer it only as a SINGLE mean of understanding, which is mine.

Let me start with the word 'exist' (a verb used without an object) and its sibling 'existence' (its qualitative state or attribution). The word exist often refers to be or to live, more specifically to CONTINUE to be or to live, as in the phrase "poverty still exists". I believe this convention does not capture the essence of the word because it suggests two misleading and limiting implications. First is the idea that existence in some way refers to an actual entity, living or inanimate. Second that existence is temporal. In other words, existence is equivalent to the actuality of any object, condition, or being and that actuality has a beginning (creation) and an ending (termination). I would like to offer a different dimension of the word, with coordinates not associated with reality and time, but rather, established from the root of the word.

The word 'exist' derives from the Latin words 'ex' meaning out (of) or away (from), and 'sistere' meaning to stand. So its literal origin of meaning was "to stand out" or "stand apart from". Think of a police line up and suspect #3 steping forward. Suspect #3 now appears before you, distinguished from the group of others. The witness can point to him, identify him, describe him. #3 is a particular person in a particular place and time. Are the other suspects real? Of course. But I would propose they don't exist. The others are not definable, distinguishable, or even recognizable because they are not the immediate subject (no pun intended). Let me try another way.

Not long ago I stood before a large photograph of a hummingbird in an art gallery, and what made the photo so captivating is that the background was so blurry all you could make out was some vague, ethereal colors, but the hummingbird, in focus, appeared to pop out from this background. The bird was the subject of the photo. The background most likely consisted of trees, mountains, clouds, a backyard or such. Were the contents of the background real? Certainly, but they didn't exist. The observer could not identify, differentiate, or understand them. For this "standing out" or focus requires an observer. Am I saying entities have an existence only in the regard of an observer? YES. Is this the conventional, proper, or established definition? NO.

Once an observer takes notice of an object, entity, concept, feeling or being, REAL OR IMAGINARY, it now declares its existence. This existence lends way to discovery, inspection, definition, clarification, classification, explanation, comprehension, and most importantly understanding. In fact, ANYTHING (concept, emotion, object, situation, condition, fantasy, being) that can be defined, explained, illustrated, or named exists. If this is confusing, try this. Try to define, explain, illustrate or name anything that DOESN'T exist. Try your best to demonstrate it. It can't be done. If in your retort, a dragon comes to mind, consider this. There is no evidence (yet) that dragons are real. But ask someone to define, describe, or draw one and they could - provided the concept of dragon was presented to them by picture, animation, or story. Show them a picture series of a unicorn, a mermaid, Santa Claus, and a dragon and they will point it out to you. Further, they could likely offer attributes within their description of a dragon (winged, enormous, fire-breathing, green serpent that incinerated dozens of English knights to save Blondie).

Why is this explanation the best? Because it clearly differentiates between entities that exist (subjective presentation) from those that are real (objective actuality). In other words, this distinction clarifies the difference between entities that are merely perceptual from those actual. For instance there are entities in our universe that possess actuality and are objectively real but do not exist to you or me because these entities don't stand out to us. Or here's another way.

I once heard someone state that gravity didn't exist until 1687. It got a laugh out of everyone around, even me. But now I understand AND concur with that statement. Of course the forces of gravity and the laws governing that reality have always been actual, for those forces need no subjective observer to impart effect. Those forces shaped every physical entity in our universe. Gravity is real. But when did the nature and laws of gravity first exist? When they stood out to Newton!

Hope my effort helped or, at very least, gave alternate meaning.

Answer 5

First of all, there MUST be a difference. It has been argued for probably centuries, and it must come to a end.

Existing Vs. Being Real

Let us use the analogy: Illusion

Illusion, is arguably both true and false. True in a sense that it is and can be presented, therefore exists.. and False, because its nature is referred as fallacious and deceitful.

In an Illusion, The presence of an object, proves its existence. But IF the accuracy of the object is counterfactual and fabricated, therefore it is false.

Matter and energy are commonly both TRUE by existence and TRUE by accuracy. But information is ALWAYS (even in emptiness, without space and time) TRUE in existence and TRUE/FALSE by accuracy, it really depends on how you translate an information.

In conclusion There is indeed a difference: Existence: The presence of an object. ——————————- To be real: The true value of an information, or sometimes, object.

Answer 6

Others have pointed to some ways in which "real" and "exists" can be used differently in philosophy, but there's one that hasn't been mentioned yet--one can be a "realist" about the truth-value of certain propositions, meaning one believes there is some kind of objective mind-independent truth about whether the proposition is true or false, and yet deny that the entities named in the proposition "exist". A good example of this is philosophy of mathematics, the SEP article on mathematical platonism has a section on truth-value realism that makes this distinction:

Truth-value realism is the view that every well-formed mathematical statement has a unique and objective truth-value that is independent of whether it can be known by us and whether it follows logically from our current mathematical theories. The view also holds that most mathematical statements that are deemed to be true are in fact true. So truth-value realism is clearly a metaphysical view. But unlike platonism it is not an ontological view. For although truth-value realism claims that mathematical statements have unique and objective truth-values, it is not committed to the distinctively platonist idea that these truth-values are to be explained in terms of an ontology of mathematical objects.

Mathematical platonism clearly motivates truth-value realism by providing an account of how mathematical statements get their truth-values. But the former view does not entail the latter unless further premises are added. For even if there are mathematical objects, referential and quantificational indeterminacy may deprive mathematical statements of a unique and objective truth-value. Conversely, truth-value realism does not by itself entail Existence and thus implies neither object realism nor platonism. For there are various accounts of how mathematical statements can come to possess unique and objective truth-values which do not posit a realm of mathematical objects.2

A similar distinction can occur among those who take a realist attitude towards the truth-value of at least some counterfactuals (what-if statements about possible worlds that contradict what happened in our world, like "if Stanislav Petrov had not disobeyed orders, there would have been a nuclear war in 1983"). The philosopher David Lewis advocated modal realism, the notion that other possible worlds exist just like ours, in part because it gave a straightforward answer to how there can be truths about what occurred in other possible worlds. Other philosophers agree there can be truths about other possible worlds, and are in that sense "realists" about such propositions, but they try to find ways to justify that without assuming other possible worlds actually exist. Another example can be found in the philosophy of time, where many presentists agree with eternalists are realists about the past in the sense that they think there are objective truths about what events occurred in past times, but the eternalists think past events and objects exist in exactly the same sense as present ones, while presentists think they have ceased to exist.

One other broad point is that in analytic philosophy, there is a strong tendency to think about metaphysical questions (including the question of whether there are any metaphysical truths at all distinct from scientific or mathematical truths) in terms of a hypothetical exhaustive set of true propositions about reality. For example, in philosophy of mind, those who argue against eliminative materialism often appeal to some notion of further facts about consciousness that would go beyond a complete set of physical facts, as in Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" (note his comment on p. 442 that "if the facts of experience—facts about what it is like for the experiencing organism—are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism") or David Chalmers' thought-experiment about a possible zombie world where all the physical facts are identical to those in our world, but facts about qualia are different.

When it comes to questions of what does and doesn't exist, Quine's criterion of ontological commitment has been very influential in analytic philosophy. Basically, the idea here is to imagine a complete set of true propositions about reality expressed in logical language, and then to treat the "nouns" in these propositions (technically, the values of bound variables) as the existing entities, while other terms like the "adjectives" (the predicates, i.e. properties and relations) are not--one can say something like "the apple is red" and treat the apple as existing but without the need to commit to the color red as a separate existing thing as opposed to a property). However, there are some philosophers who would take the idea of a complete set of true propositions about reality as a primitive notion, and see questions about what terms in these propositions "exist" as meaningless, or purely a matter of human linguistic conventions. In chapter 3 of the book Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, David Chalmers refers to this type of position as "ontological anti-realism", writing:

The basic question of ontology is ‘What exists?’ The basic question of metaontology is: are there objective answers to the basic question of ontology? Here ontological realists say yes, and ontological anti-realists say no.

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For example, the ontologist may ask: Do numbers exist? The Platonist says yes, and the nominalist says no. The metaontologist may ask: is there an objective fact of the matter about whether numbers exist? The ontological realist says yes, and the ontological anti-realist says no.

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Ontological realism is often traced to Quine (1948), who held that we can determine what exists by seeing which entities are endorsed by our best scientific theory of the world. In recent years, the practice of ontology has often presupposed an ever-stronger ontological realism, and strong versions of ontological realism have received explicit statements by Fine (2000; this volume), Sider (2001; this volume), van Inwagen (1998; this volume), and others.

Ontological anti-realism is often traced to Carnap (1950), who held that there are many different ontological frameworks, holding that different sorts of entities exist, and that while some frameworks may be more useful than others for some purposes, there is no fact of the matter as to which framework is correct. In recent years, versions of ontological anti-realism have been developed by Putnam (1987), Sidelle (2001), Yablo (this volume), and others.

An intermediate sort of lightweight realism has also developed, holding that while there are objective answers to ontological questions, these answers are somehow shallow or trivial, perhaps grounded in conceptual truths. Deflationary views of this sort have been developed by Hirsch (1993; this volume), Thomasson (2007; this volume), Hale and Wright (2001; this volume), and others. These views contrast with what we might call the heavyweight realism of Fine, Sider, van Inwagen, and others, according to which answers to ontological questions are highly nontrivial.

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A consideration favoring deflationary views against heavyweight realism is the following. Say that we know all about the qualitative properties of two objects—two cups, say—and the qualitative relations between them, leaving out any properties or relations concerning objects that they jointly compose. There is a strong intuition that we are thereby in a position to know everything relevant there is to know about the objects. There is no deep further truth concerning whether the objects compose a further object (a cupcup, say) of which we are potentially ignorant. The question of whether there is a cupcup is a matter for bookkeeping or for semantic decision, perhaps, but it is not a matter for discovery.

Note that in this last example, the ontological anti-realist is not an anti-realist in general--they may well believe there are objective answers to questions found in physics about the matter/energy making up the cups, like the complete quantum state of all the particles making them up. They just wouldn't believe in any further objective facts about existence, like which subsets of particles constitute existing objects.

Answer 7

The main question seems to me not about discriminating between "to exist" and to "be real". IMO the primordial problem is: Can one define the concept of "being real" or the concept of "existing"?

These concepts seem to me so basic or foundational that one cannot reduce their meaning via a definition to other more fundamental concept.

The only way seems to me to take them as undefined basic concepts. And to relate them to other fundamental concepts, e.g., to the concepts of "being true" or "being possible".

It could be helpful to study the concepts of "existence" or "being real" in the context of a formal ontology.

Answer 8

What exists is a question of what kind of ontology you subscribe to. A theist would say gods or God exists and an athiest would say that gods or God does not exist. So it very much depends.

Ontology isn't a question that is very seriously thought about in certain circles that should think about it a bit harder. For example, Arkani-Hamid (an American-Iranian physicist) says "spacetime is doomed" because certain physicists believe there is a more fundamental atemporal and aspatial substrate. But even if this is true, and I generally go with this, spacetime will still be here. It will still exist. In fact Arkani-Hamid should say, "spacetime as a fundamental ontology is doomed" but that doesn't have the same punchiness of the original - which I guess why Arkani-Hamed favours it.

The question of what is real and what exists is tied up with the history of these two words and what they mean, especially with regards to differing philosophical viewpoints. For example, to take Islamic Falsafa (philosophy), they say existence is part of Allah's essence. And He is the most real thing. And everything that exists, exists due to His existence. He is thus the only real thing.

So like I said, it depends. You will need to specify a bit more about the kind of ontology you subscribe to.

Answer 9

That is a really good question best one I've heard in a long time. You had me for a minute, but the clear answer is reality is reality based. It's subjective to The Observer. So you define what is real. A cup may exist. But unless you decide it's a cup it is just something sitting on the counter but it still exists. So it's not really a cup until you decide it's a cup.

Answer 10

What is the difference between “to exist” vs “to be real”?

The concept of existence is an epistemological concept. We say that something exists whenever we perceive or believe that we perceive it.

This is apparent in its etymology: the word "exist" comes from the Latin existere, to come forth, be manifest, that is, ex- + sistere, to stand.

The concept of reality is an ontological concept. What is real is real independently of whether anyone knows that it exists.

The main consequence of this is that existential claims stem from personal perception or belief, while the question of what things are real literally comes down to common sense, which is produced through verbal interactions and consensus.

This is also why we think of reality as potentially extending beyond (and well beyond) what is manifest. Typically, we learn of the furniture of the real world through our verbal interactions with other people, while our notion of existence starts with ourselves since we have direct knowledge of our own existence.

From the subject's perspective, existence implies reality, but the reality of what one believe exists is decided by public consensus.

Thus, our personal notion of reality starts with our own existence and is gradually extended through experience and perception, and through verbal interactions with other people.