RE: A Conscious Universe
January 31, 2015 at 10:14 pm
(This post was last modified: January 31, 2015 at 10:15 pm by Mudhammam.)
(January 31, 2015 at 5:32 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Dealing with QM challenges the imagination severely. I strongly think that those who say they understand QM and parade out formulae don't really get it. (This is not directed at anyone in particular by the way)I'm probably in way over my head here, but my lay understanding is as follows: it exists in the sense that it occupies space, contains energy, and eliminates the presence of a vacuum. When a field is an excited state, the particle is born. Since fields are always interacting with each other, wave functions collapse; particles are "measured" by different fields and other agglomerations of particles, forcing the excited states into a definite position in spacetime. The problem with "an idea" as the solution, one that exists solely in thought without any characteristic identifiable with a world where concepts are provided definition by sense data, is that it cannot, at least as I can see, be understood in terms of how this purely abstract existence could affect physical reality.
If a particle has no definite location, then in what sense does it exist? I'd argue that it represents information-- information about a future relationship or constraint. I would not say a QM field is a "thing," since it has no definable shape, volume, or location (afaik). It is not existent, but is rather a description of what could be existent if "called upon" to be resolved.
In a physical monism, fields are like mysterious ghosts. That's one of the reasons I like idealism: you don't need to orient an idea in space, or establish its volume. You just need to know what potential relationships a "particle" represents.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza