Tractatus Analogico-Mythologicus
A description is a way of dividing the world into at least two parts: the phenomenon to be described, and the phenomenon used to do the describing. If we describe a rose as red, we implicitly divide the world into the rose on one side and everything else (such as concept of redness) — on the other. For a description to be useful, it must convey information that the listener doesn’t already possess. Saying “this rose is rosy”, is redundant. We can label the two parts of a description the target (the phenomenon to be described) and the descriptor set (the set of concepts used for describing).
Reality is whatever it is… only our models of it can be considered continuous or discrete (or true, or false, or useful).
I say this like it’s obvious, but it’s a potentially controversial opinion. 🙂
People have a strong tendency to confuse the map with the territory. So a very successful theory becomes synonymous with reality itself.
But things get murky when we investigate all the details of the theory. If we are being extra cautious about what we consider “real”, then we can always wait for experimental confirmation before believing in the existence of some thing or process proposed by a theory.