Reality - thing or phenomenon?

To say that for change to occur there must be something--some substantive thing--to be the subject of change is to be constrained not by physical reality; it is to be constrained by grammar, i.e., the rule: a predicate must have a subject.

I am questioning the assumption igm...you see without a defined state even if just for a nanosecond you cannot have change or to put in layman terms that which is not anything cannot be mesured become something else, you need identity...so it must be something.

It says that maybe we sometimes, for lack of better options, base our assumptions on grammatical criteria that are necessary for expressing an idea, but not for experiencing the idea directly.
It is interesting, because it describes how clever-sounding nonsense might come from someone who is unaware of this 'problem with language'.

The point is to deliberately not be explicit (objective) but complicated and loose... free roam gazing can be a terrible addiction...Froid probably would associate it with missing your childhood. The thing is they don't offer a model n that's unacceptable, no matter how much good will we try to put at their word...there is nothing there to look at.

Without the verbally acquired concept "triangle" would you still see it ?
It has been shown that the perception of the Muller Lyer illusion (differential lengths of equal lines with opposit arrow heads) is dependent on living in a culture with perpendicular architecture.

In short we do not merely "receive" visual input from an "external world", we are active participants in the construction of what we call "reality", [/size]and culturally /verbally acquired functional concepts are the selective spectacles we cannot avoid. ( Similar evidence on color vision has also been reported)
As humans, we have already acquired verbal concepts like "hammer", "brick", "rock" etc with which we can verbally reconstruct (aka "observe" according to Maturana) a pain reception scenario. Prior to the "pain" writers like Heidegger said that neither the hammer nor the finger had "existence" in the sense that their verbalization was irrelevent to current functioning. ( Consider the scenario where I verbalise the need of a hammer which I believe I have in my shed. I get there to find the handle has rotted away. Is it still "a hammer"... no...functionality is lacking.)

Of course this is a major departure from lay realism, but the point is that there are an infinite number of potential "things" that might be conceptualized to which we never ascribe the lay meaning of "existence".

These are all aspect of the paradigm I have called "relative existence". It requires axioms involving the definition of "life" (see Maturana) and the view that "cognition" is about sustaining structural integrity of living structures (including social structures). Segmentation of the external environment (what we usually call "reality") is a an organizational and verbal aspect of the cognitive process.

Change happens like a moving picture happens, the all film is there but you can only see the current frame in time...thus you can reasonably assume there is a set of states from which each state follows.

Because you are applying that word as though you were a God transcendent of all observers and all language users. You might as well use "the Absolute","the Ultimate", or some other nebulous term if you separate "reality" from "functionality". And it is not a question of "knowing" because that word too is inextricably tied to functionality.

Please try thinking about it this time before issuing platitudes from your bunker.

Correct. Not a bunker....an intellectual graveyard in which "thinking" is no more.

In short we do not merely "receive" visual input from an "external world", we are active participants in the construction of what we call "reality",

As humans, we have already acquired verbal concepts like "hammer", "brick", "rock" etc with which we can verbally reconstruct (aka "observe" according to Maturana) a pain reception scenario.

There is a difference between trying to describe REALITY...and REALITY.

Quote:

There is a difference between trying to describe REALITY...and REALITY.

That sounds sensible.
But is there a difference between perceiving reality ...and reality?