1512.What Is

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What is properly meant by "reality," or "the real"?

By "reality," or "the real," is properly meant, not simply "whotever happens to exist,taken in its contingent aspects alone," but rather "that to which true affirmations refer," or lithe object of correct affirmations (that which measures their truth)" (Wisdo'm as Moderation: 65 f.). On this meaning, not only the contingent, or "that which contingent true assertions affirm," is real, but also the necessary, or what necessary true assertions affirm. (Hartshorne is right: the best word for what contingent true assertions affirm is not simply "reality," or "the rea!," but "fact," in the sense of "something in nature that, having been made or produced Cfacere, factum) might conceivably not have been as it is.") 

By "the necessary" here is properly meant "the common element of all possibility," and so "reality as such," which "is neither a fact, nor something merely 'behind,' or additional, to all facts[,] but rather something in them all" (63, 65 f.). 

March 1998; rev. 18 August 2003