Yes, a particular thing. Something that I can experience.
For example, a tree.
If you want to help someone understand the concept that you are using the best way to do it is to give them a number of examples that are labelled either as “this is an example of my concept” or as “this is NOT an example of my concept” and then let them make connections on their own.
That’s also how we train computers to differentiate between different classes of images e.g. those with a face and those without a face.
This is basically a style of learning that is known as constructionism. The good thing about it is that people do things on their own, i.e. you teach them how to be independent, so that when they face an unfamiliar situation they don’t freak out. The bad thing is that it requires a lot of experience and this means making a lot of mistakes.
If you cannot afford making mistakes then the alternative is instructionism which is about giving people instructions that they can follow independently from their experience. The good thing about this approach is that it’s easy to learn. All you have to do is understand language (i.e. what sort of action each one of the instructions refers to) and memorize the set of instructions on how to act that has been devised by someone else (usually someone who learned these things the hard way i.e. through laborious process of trial and error.) That’s what a theory is. It’s just a set of instructions on how to make predictions independently from your experience. All you have to do is fill the formula with input parameters and do the calculations. This is deductive reasoning. No need to be experienced. You can be clueless and still make accurate predictions. This is why theories, and instructions in general, are often used as a way to hide one’s inferiority. Anyways, the bad thing about instructionism is that it makes you brittle. The moment you leave your comfort zone, i.e. the part of reality the theory you are using is capable of predicting with sufficient degree of accuracy, you freak out. You crash in the most ungraceful way that is possible. Basically, if you simply follow other people’s instructions, you cannot adapt to new, previously unseen, situations. At best, you can go back to your instructor to give you new instructions.
All of this may seem irrelevant to you but it isn’t really. If you’re an instructionist – and by you I don’t mean specifically you – then it is not surprising that you place so much emphasis on language, words, definitions, etc. Because that’s where you get all of your knowledge from. Experience never enters your picture.
The more examples you give someone, the more accurate their understanding will be.
Categories are inductively inferred.
I am saying that the word “real” is a label that is attached to assumptions that have the potential to influence our behavior. This is a very modest understanding of the word “real”. When you cut out all of the pretenses, all of the references or pseudo-references to the world beyond our experience, that’s what you get. It’s just a plain and simple description of how the word “real” is used in everyday life.
You ask what do I mean by assumption.
An example would be any kind of prediction.
Whenever you say something will happen (which means you are predicting it will happen) you are assuming that that something will happen.
The purpose of predictions is to motivate us to take preventive measures.
Another example is the idea that humans evolved from monkeys.
This one isn’t a prediction because it is not an assumption regarding some future point in time. But it’s still an assumption. And the purpose of such an assumption is to help us predict the future.
Say you think there will be WW3 within next 10 years.
What does that mean?
It means you are predicting (or expecting) WW3 within next 10 years.
What does that mean in turn?
It means that you might prepare for it.
On the other hand, if you don’t think there will be WW3 within next 10 years, then what that means is that you won’t prepare for it.
I suppose that what you mean by “all experience we don’t have” is that the concept of reality has no temporal restrictions. For example, the concept of reality does not refer exclusively to my experience up to this point in time. It refers to my experience at any point in time which includes my experience at future points in time (i.e. future experience.) Otherwise, if you mean something beyond this, then you’re stepping into the territory of non-sense, I am afraid.
Let’s stick to the definition that makes sense. Reality refers to experience of any kind. Isn’t that all-inclusive? The world of Star Wars is also a form of experience.
But the world of Star Wars is all around me. In the form of movies, games, comics, novels, toys, etc. Are you saying that these things are not real?
The problem is resolved by realizing that the word “real” is attached to assumptions. In the case of Star Wars, the assumption that there is a physical world of Star Wars.