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

by dhw, Thursday, August 01, 2013, 15:18 (4130 days ago) @ rekastner

Dhw: My problem here is not different levels of possibility, but different levels of reality. My love for my wife and children is as real to me as the house I live in, but the former is non-physical and the latter physical. The claim that a quantum POTENTIAL is "more real than mere thoughts or imaginings or conceivable events" (your Section 7.2) seems to me to cry out for a yardstick by which you measure reality. The only one you appear to be offering is physicality.
 
RUTH: Well, a physicist can set up a laser in the lab and conduct an experiment in which whatever is coming out of the laser can be described by a specific mathematical object in a specific theoretical construct that will predict very precisely what he will observe.
Can you apply the same formalism to an idea, concept or subjective feeling and predict with equal success? I don't think so, and that's why I view the latter as not being in the same metaphysical category as quantum objects.-So is predictability your yardstick for measuring reality? I thought that one essential feature of the quantum world was its UNpredictability.
 
Theoretically, though, given all the necessary information, I suppose any outcome is predictable, even for concepts and subjective feelings. The question is whether we have all the necessary information. So are you saying that in the quantum world we have more of the necessary information to predict outcomes than in the world of human ideas and feelings? Is your experiment with the laser more "real" than my concept of a house (which can be given precise and predictable physical reality by my architect and builders) or than my feelings should something disastrous happen to my family? If predictability is your criterion for measuring reality, doesn't that make much of life and Nature unreal? A burst tyre that causes a car to mount the pavement at precisely the time and place where I happen to be walking would therefore not be as "real" as your experiment with a laser, because the latter is predictable and the former is not.-I do hope you can understand why I still find your original statement and subsequent explanations concerning the reality of quantum potentials confusing, and I hope my confusion is not making too many demands on your patience!