A Conversation in the Senior Common Room (Where Reality Is, Regrettably, Still Present)
The fire has achieved a level of consistency that might qualify as “real.” Professor Quillibrace observes it without commitment. Mr Blottisham appears ready to extract its essence. Miss Elowen Stray watches the patterning of its persistence.
Blottisham:
I’ve got it. This time we go properly fundamental. None of this dissolving business. The real question is: What is truly real?
Quillibrace:
Ah. The word “truly.” Philosophy’s favourite smuggling device.
Stray:
It does feel like it’s pointing to something beneath everything else. As if there’s a purified layer—what remains when all appearances fall away.
Quillibrace:
Yes. A promise of ontological laundering.
1. The Work Done by “Truly”
Blottisham:
Well, obviously we need to distinguish between what merely seems real and what actually is real.
Quillibrace:
So we are offered the familiar oppositions:
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appearance versus reality,
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illusion versus truth,
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constructed versus “as-it-is-in-itself.”
Stray:
And the implication is that anything involving interpretation or perspective is somehow less real?
Blottisham:
Naturally. Mediation introduces… unreliability.
Quillibrace:
Or so one hopes.
The word “truly” signals the demand for a non-derivative layer of being—something that does not depend on anything else, least of all perspective.
Blottisham:
Exactly. The real real.
Quillibrace:
A category known for its precision.
2. The Fantasy Beneath the Question
Stray:
So what has to be assumed for this to make sense?
Quillibrace:
A rather ambitious purification project.
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That there exists a level of reality prior to construal.
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That construal is an optional overlay rather than constitutive.
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That one could, in principle, access being “as it is in itself.”
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And that mediation is a contaminant rather than the condition of appearance.
Blottisham:
All of which seem… eminently reasonable.
Quillibrace:
All of which converge on a single fantasy: that reality is what remains once relation has been subtracted.
Stray:
So “the truly real” would be what survives the removal of interpretation, perception, meaning—
Quillibrace:
—everything that allows anything to appear in the first place, yes.
Blottisham:
Well when you put it like that, it does sound slightly self-defeating.
3. The Impossible Operation
Stray:
Within a relational framework, construal isn’t optional, is it? It’s what makes phenomena possible at all.
Quillibrace:
Precisely. Which makes the question structurally peculiar.
It performs a double move:
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It treats construal as separable from reality.
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Then defines reality as what exists without construal.
Blottisham:
Which seems efficient.
Quillibrace:
It is also contradictory.
You are attempting to access a condition—“un-construed reality”—that, by definition, would not appear within any system of construal.
Stray:
So the moment we pose the question, we’ve already reintroduced the very thing we’re trying to remove?
Quillibrace:
Exactly. The question requires what it forbids.
Blottisham:
So we can’t even recognise this “truly real” without… construing it?
Quillibrace:
You are beginning to see the difficulty.
4. If We Refuse Purification
Blottisham:
Then what does “real” refer to, if not some pristine underlying layer?
Quillibrace:
Something far less theatrical.
“Real” denotes stabilised actuality within constrained relational systems.
Stray:
So reality isn’t beneath construal—it’s what persists through it?
Quillibrace:
Exactly.
What you call “reality” is the outcome of:
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systematic constraints,
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stratified realisation across systems,
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and stabilised patterns of construal that hold across instances.
Blottisham:
So being real doesn’t mean being unmediated?
Quillibrace:
It means being consistently actualised.
Stray:
Construal isn’t a veil, then.
Quillibrace:
It is the condition under which anything can appear as determinate at all.
5. The Disappearance of the Deep Layer
Blottisham:
So again—we lose the grand prize?
Quillibrace:
You lose the fantasy of it.
The question depends on:
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a contrast between constructed and non-constructed being,
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the possibility of stepping outside all construal,
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and the idea that mediation diminishes reality.
Remove these, and there is no remaining contrast for “truly real” to operate against.
Stray:
So the question isn’t uncovering a deeper layer—it’s expressing a demand for being without the conditions of appearance?
Quillibrace:
Precisely.
6. Why the Fantasy Persists
Blottisham:
And yet I still feel there ought to be something more real than everything else.
Quillibrace:
Of course you do. The fantasy is structurally seductive.
It offers:
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ontological purification—reality without mediation,
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epistemic relief—certainty without perspective,
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metaphysical closure—a final layer beneath all others.
Stray:
And there’s a strong intuition that interpretation introduces distortion—so truth must lie beyond it.
Quillibrace:
A confusion.
Variation in construal is mistaken for absence of reality.
Blottisham:
Which is rather comforting, actually.
Quillibrace:
Comfort is rarely a reliable ontological guide.
Closing
Blottisham:
So “what is truly real?” turns out to be—
Quillibrace:
—a projection. The imposition of a non-relational fantasy onto a system in which relation is constitutive.
Stray:
And once that projection is withdrawn?
Quillibrace:
Reality is not diminished.
It becomes more specific.
Not an underlying substance waiting to be uncovered, but the patterned stability of what is continuously and differentially actualised through construal.
Blottisham:
So there’s no purified core beneath everything?
Quillibrace:
Only the persistent hope that there might be.
Stray (quietly):
And the patterns that remain, whether or not we hope.
Blottisham:
I must admit, I rather liked the idea of a final, spotless reality.
Quillibrace:
Yes. Many do.
It has the advantage of never having to appear.
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