the way i see it is that the only "real" things are physical forms of energy, the location of said forms of energy, fundamental forces, and space itself. thats not to say that things such as ideas aren't real they are neural connections which physically exist.
[Doc: So only physically tangible things can exist? So the contents of your thoughts could not be said to exist as meaningful things. They are just random noise. No no of course that's not so. You really are reading these words. There really are words and associated concepts flowing in your mind as you really are reading this. They exist as real, actual thoughts. A thought is indeed an actual thing. It's not an external thing or a tangible thing or an independently verifiable thing (not with current technology) but you really do have real thoughts. It's real, just in a different way than what you're used to defining it as.]
Things like justice or responsibility or good health. These things definitely do exist in some form or another, but their effects are too subjective, or too complexly intertwined or variable, to be considered to have a measurable effect. They probably would not be at the far end of the scale at “no effect”, but rather, somewhere along the middle.
things like justice and responsibility as i see it are not real in and of themselves they are concepts however peoples ideas of them are real and thats what is having an affect on things.
[This is my point exactly. They really exist as conceptual objects. Not all concepts need to be tangible or directly measurable to be a real thing.]
i aslo see "fake" and "not real" as two completely different things.
[Yes yes, exactly. However, many people would look at that plastic tree and go, oh it's not a "real" tree, or AI or a tulpa, and say, it's not a "real" person, because it is fake and artificial. Do you see the direction I was headed with that?]
emotions would then be as you said chemicals in the brain that do physically exist.
[Ah but the chemicals are the response to the emotion. They are not the emotion themselves. Adrenalin is not fear, no more so than oxytocin is love or serotonin is joy or melatonin is fatigue. They are effects or causes or contributing factors, but they themselves are not the emotion. The emotion itself is a real thing that exists independent of the chemical reactions that precede or proceed from it.]
as for tulpae and wonderlands they are just as ideas or your own mind neural connections which physically exist.
[Ah and that is exactly the point, is it not? They are, we are, real ideas, often with real effects related to their perceived tangibility or consistency or validity. Just as much as the personhood of the host can affect external tangible reality through manipulation of the physical form, so too can a tulpa. It is not less real. It is differently real. Or, that is the concept I am trying to convey in this thread.]