Reality (General)

by dhw, Sunday, November 17, 2019, 11:34 (1832 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I refuse to accept that they [the actions of individual particles] are more real than the explicable behaviour of the combined particles of the bus! [...]

DAVID: […] Both the weird particle activity and the bus are obviously real, but the unreal activity of the particles create the bus that can crush you. The particles we are discussing are not represented by the bus. They are the bus but in a different form. They are part of our reality while we don't understand as to how they create our recognizable reality. Your bus is a terrible analogy in view of the difference.

dhw: You have bolded and then ignored the argument that I keep disputing! There is no “analogy”. The combined particles and predictable activity of the bus are real. They do not “represent” anything. Why do you say the activity of the individual particles is unreal? It is real, but we don’t understand it. What I do not accept is that the latter activity is MORE REAL than the activity of the combination that makes up the bus.

You also mentioned your God as an immaterial reality, but I agree that we should drop that subject as it only complicates matters still further.

DAVID: Both regions [i.e. individual quanta and combined bus quanta] are just as real as you want, but vastly different. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: […] I agree with your conclusion (bolded). My disagreement with Kastner was over the claim that the behaviour of the “raw materials” was MORE real than that of the combined materials. My disagreement with you was over your statement that “quantum mechanics is the basis of reality”. […] All we can agree on, as you so rightly say, is that the two forms of behaviour are real and vastly different, and nobody has yet found an explanatory link.

DAVID: I sense we are in a degree of agreement.

We are indeed. Out with Kastner’s “more real”, and let’s leave a question mark over your claim that the incomprehensible behaviour of individual particles creates the perfectly comprehensible behaviour of particles en bloc.

DAVID: As an example of quantum experiments read the following brief summary of a quantum experiment:
https://theconversation.com/quantum-physics-our-study-suggests-objective-reality-doesnt...
QUOTE: "[…] In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective."

DAVID: And as you read the rest you will understand the confusion everyone feels about the particles that create our reality.

I know all about the confusion, which is why I object to definitive statements about the basic role played by quantum mechanics in the creation of our everyday reality, and a few days ago I pointed out that nobody knows what “objective” reality consists of because our perception of it is always subjective; the nearest we can come to objectivity is consensus. And consensus has it that the behaviour of the bus and of the quantum theorist it hits is as close to objective reality as we can get.