The flying dream

About this video

Last night Mei dreamed she could fly over the roofs of her town, and it felt completely real. Then she woke up in her bed, and the bed felt just as real as the flying had a minute before. So how can she be sure this is real and the dream was not? And what does "real" mean, anyway?

Some questions ask how things are: how tall is the tree, is it raining, what is in the box. You answer them by looking, measuring or asking someone who knows. Other questions go deeper: what is there at all, and what is it to be real? Is a dream real in some way? Is a shadow a thing, or only a place where light isn't? Is the number 7 real, though nobody has ever seen or touched it? Looking and measuring don't answer these, because they are about what looking and measuring find. The part of philosophy that asks them is metaphysics, the study of what is real and what it is like. The name means "after the books about nature": long after Aristotle died, the people who collected his writings put his books on these questions after his books on nature.

Look at five things. A chair is easy: anyone can sit on it. A dragon in a picture book is easy the other way: the drawing is real, but no dragon exists. The other three are harder. A rainbow is really there - everyone sees it, you can photograph it - but you can never walk up and touch it. A shadow moves and changes shape, but is it a thing or an absence of light? And it is true for everyone, everywhere, that 3 and 4 make 7, yet the number 7 isn't anywhere. So "real" may not be one simple thing.

No experiment can decide whether the number 7 exists. Metaphysics works by careful thinking instead: clear questions, reasons, examples that test ideas, and every answer thinkers have given. This video goes with the What Is Real? lesson of Metaphysics Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00Mei dreamed she could fly. It felt real. Then she woke up.
2. 0:05Some questions ask how things are. Metaphysics asks what is real at all.
3. 0:11A chair, a rainbow, a shadow, a dragon, the number seven.
4. 0:17The chair is real. The dragon doesn't exist. The other three are harder.
5. 0:23No experiment decides it. Careful thinking makes it clearer.
6. 0:29What does it mean to be real?