Well, of course, there are problems, in a way. However, it sometimes occurs to me, that I get into a discussion with people, friends, colleagues who insist that there is a problem and it needs to be solved, or at least acknowledged, may be addressed, instantaneously and to recognize this situation not as a problem is a sincere shortcoming, not understandable, and sometimes not tolerable.
But without going too deep into philosophical questions about what is reality etc. we can surely assert that problems are not in the same sense real as trees, cars, nations, or laws. What are problems, then? First and most, problems are no entities we can point to. Problems are, logically speaking, relations in the first place. A problem starts with assigning a difference between a certain state as it is perceived, or measured, and another state that should be the case instead. E.g. if something is broken, therefore not working, and should be functional instead. In logical terms, a problem is a relation P = delta(s1, s2), where s1 is a state as it is measured or perceived, s2 is the state that we wish should be the case, and delta is the difference between these two states.
But a problem is not just a difference, but a difference that is considered to be bad. Let us denote this as P = delta(s1, s2), where delta < 0. A big problem would then be one with a very big delta, or delta << 0.
As we can immediately see, this is not enough. First, while state s1 may indeed exist in itself and is perceivable and perhaps measurable (but always by someone, we’ll come to that later), state s2 is not. It exists only in someone’s head, or may be as a written description of that state. To be continued …