If my reality is created by other people’s words, and others’ reality is created by my words, then it would seem that everyone would have a different reality depending on what words are spoken to them.
So, which reality is the real reality?
Words are a means of exchanging ideas.
Exchanging ideas with others qualifies as an experience and contributes, in concert with other kinds of experience, to one’s perception of reality. In what proportion words (exchange of ideas) contribute to one’s perception of reality compared with other experiences, is an open question.
Exchanging ideas influences one’s perception of reality and one’s perception of reality, as shaped by a range of experiences, influences the ideas that are exchanged.
Words shape (influence one’s perception of) reality, which shapes words, which shape (perception of) reality, which shapes words, which shape reality, ……… etc. Words and reality are related to each other as a cyclical system. Neither element is the source of the system.
Words and reality constitute a chicken-egg conundrum. Which came first…?
To solve a chicken-egg conundrum one might assume that there is a chicken-egg system, in which neither element is the origin. Instead the system itself is initiated by a cause that is outside of the system.
Another example of a chicken-egg (cyclical) system is the four stroke internal combustion engine. The four “strokes” are customarily listed in the sequence seen here…
…but it would make just as much sense to begin the list with any one of the four. They could be correctly sequenced as: Compression; Power; Exhaust; Intake …. repeat cycle. Although they must occur in the same order, none of the four elements of the system can be considered “first” in the sequence. Like other cyclical systems, it is initiated through a cause that is outside of the system.
In the case of the four stroke engine, the system is initiated by yanking the starter cord on my lawn mower or by turning the ignition switch on an automobile. The chicken-egg system was initiated by unnamed evolutionary forces. I would surmise that that human reality-word system was also initiated through the action of evolutionary forces.
The word-reality system rests on a foundation of objective reality. A rock is real whether I touch it or not.
