Ruth\'s \"real\" possibilities (General)

by dhw, Monday, July 29, 2013, 15:05 (4134 days ago) @ David Turell

RUTH: "'Heisenbergian 'potentia' [...] are less real than events in the actual world, yet more real than mere thoughts or conceivable events."-RUTH: "Under PTI, the realist use of the term 'possible' or 'potential' refers to physical possibilities; that is, entities which can directly give rise to specific observable physical phenomena based on a realized transaction. This is distinct from the common usage of the term 'possible' or 'possibility' to denote a situation or state of affairs which is merely conceivable or consistent with physical law." 
[Ruth then emphasizes that PTI possibilities refer to individual events rather than "universal sets of events".]-DHW: I find this confusing. Until a possibility, whether physical or intellectual, is realized in physical terms as an individual event, surely it remains a possibility, and so I can't see the distinction between your use of the term and the common usage.
 
DAVID: The key to understanding the point is in her blog I originally presented:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/06/21/can-we-resolve-quan...-"My development of the Transactional Interpretation makes use of an important idea of Werner Heisenberg: "Atoms and the elementary particles themselves ... form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than things of the facts." This world of potentialities is not contained within space and time; it is a higher-dimensional world whose structure is described by the mathematics of quantum theory. The Transactional Interpretation is best understood by considering both the offer and confirmation as Heisenbergian possibilities—that is, they are only potential events. That removes the possibility of causal-loop inconsistencies, since neither the positive-energy offer wave nor the negative-energy confirmation wave carries real energy, and neither is contained in spacetime. It is only in the encounter between the two that real energy may be conveyed within spacetime from an emitter to an absorber—and when this occurs, all the energy is delivered in the normal future direction."-This simply serves to show that a Heisenberg/TI potential remains outside space/time, since no "real" energy is involved. Only a space/time encounter results in a "real" event. My puzzlement remains: If a potential is regarded as real, there is no limit to what you can believe. But if "reality" is restricted to space/time encounters/transactions/events, why is an unrealized TI potential or "possibility" considered different from any other unrealized potential, and why is a physical potential considered more "real" than an idea or concept? N.B. I'm not saying there are no realities outside our own spacetime reality. That is the field both you and I are so eager to explore. But I need help in understanding the terms and arguments that are being used here!
 
*****-Just seen BBella's post! You're right. A lot of these discussions actually centre on terminology which always requires definitions, after which the definitions require further definitions ad infinitum. It's a philosophical syndrome we might call Definitions Of Definitions Of...You can make an acronym out of that!