Three Types of Reality

 The zeroth order of reality is fundamentally unknowable to our senses. It's rules can only be derived through the extension of our senses into domains our senses cannot perceive. Our knowledge of this reality is thus limited to our engineering capacity to manipulate it. The rules of this reality must be derived from the observations we can make. At some point, we can make no observations at all. This domain seems to undergird the reality we can perceive, the material world.

Hence, the first order of reality is assigned to the material. Things in space. Matter. Even complex processes like storms. The only reason this is more real than the zeroth order is because more people have access to it. We can discuss objects in space with decent certainty that we're referring to the same thing. This is not true of the second-order of reality, the representational or symbolic.

Numbers, words, stories, everything enters the second order of the real. However, I cannot provide you with direct access to this reality. Hence, it is second-order. I must translate it by way of second-order objects. This is confusing. It causes confusion. It also reduces confusion. 

It creates more confusion when you realize that first-order and zeroth-order objects can be moved into the second-order where they begin to operate like metaphor. In fact, anything from any order can be moved into the second order of reality to operate like a metaphor. Events can become metaphors. Even people, problematically, can become metaphors. A separation between these two orders of reality is thus necessary.