I think that's what's normally referred to as "changing the subject".
Instead, I re-conceived the question as: “What Is Life?”
I don’t think so.. Life, God, Reality... could be synonyms..
All three must be present.. aspects of the same thing..
Lose one of them then something is lost.. in the conversation..
What is length and width without depth?..
Even two dimensional art attempts to simulate depth..
To wit: a conversation with out all three is simulating depth..
Nice....... that you would notice that..
Not at all dear tacticalogic! The basic issue here is the sufficiency of questions asked to account for the sufficiency of "answers" they seek logically to entail.
djf very usefully put it this way:
[W]hat is reality?… There are a couple answers, I will spell out a few, please add to the list if you think of one!It seems that both he and I opt for (3), after having flirted with (1), and finding it somehow wanting.... [If my surmise is incorrect, please djf do correct the record.]
(1) We don’t know and we will NEVER know
(2) We are in the process of figuring it out but need more time
(3) We are asking the wrong question
For as I already mentioned, the populist, post-modernist view of "reality" sees only the physical, the material. Whatever cannot be directly observed (or indirectly observed, by means of technical extension) does not exist for a positivist or a materialist. To reduce reality itself to such an impoverished view of "all that there is" in an ordered universe (physics presupposes this) leaves out all of biology altogether.
That is why the question "What is Reality?" is the wrong question. It is blind to the Great Hierarchy of Being: God–Man–World–Society. It cannot address, let alone answer, such questions as: How do life and mind arise in Nature? (Though it has been known to construct fairy stories along those lines from time to time; e.g., macroevolution, abiogenesis, panspermia theory.)
Which is why IMHO option (3) ought to be considered: The question as stated — "What Is Reality?" — asks the "wrong" question, if one wants to understand the world in which one lives.... The "right" question is: "What Is Life?"
I don't think of this as "changing the subject," rather of "clarifying the subject," thus to ask better questions....
Good to see you again, dear tacticalogic! Thanks so much for writing.