@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;167549 wrote:The chair is there, in reality. However, this reality is named in a particular way. In the terms of physics, all the molecules of chair and not-chair are continuous. The chair is being bombarded by air molecules. Perhaps someone is sitting on it. It itself stands on the floor. We have physical continuity, but conceptually we see and refer to a discrete entity. It is organized by thought in a particular way. Do you see what I mean? Of course it's automatic "thought," so another word might be better. But my second point is stronger, in my opinion. To speak of a chair is to offer a thought, even if this thought points immediate to said chair. Of course the whole issue is tangled in the question of the difference between a chair and a "chair." Ah, the famous problem of universals.
Maybe to speak of a chair is sometimes to offer a thought about a chair. But that does not make speaking about a chair, a chair, nor make a thought of a chair, a chair. No doubt we call the physical object we sit on by the term, "chair", but the word "chair" is not a chair anymore than a picture of a pipe is a pipe. What the physicist tells us a chair is, is, of course, a different matter.
A chair is physical object. "Chair" is, of course, a word (which is, of course, also a physical object, but not a chair).