(September 23, 2015 at 8:08 am)Captain Scarlet Wrote: No I have responded by saying that they have values in spacetime and are therefore not ideas.Really? These values establish that they are not ideas? How, pray tell.
Quote:The form is that determined by the maths What are you after here, the describtion of a billiard ball (which it probably isn't for example?).No. What I want is an unambiguous description of a thing, which is necessary to call it a thing rather than an idea. A collection of formulae and "values" isn't really convincing in this regard, since those are, exactly, ideas.
Quote: You keep asking me to define a form and I keep referring you to the models which will give you that. I cannot describe the form in a platonic or Newtonian sense.I think form is a pretty simple word. What does a QM particle look like? What's it's volume? What's it's shape? What are the properties by which you can infer that it is a thing, and not an idea or an expression of one or more ideas?
Quote:I mean to say what I said. They really exist. We can detect them. I am not sure what would count as evidence of a photon to you? If your standard of evidence is a want to see a photon, as a billiard ball, in 3D space or I am forced to believe photons dont really exist, they are just an idea, materialism is false or significantly flawed... well you might just be disappointed.The issue isn't whether photons exist. It's whether they are the expression of physical mechanisms or the expression of ideas. I think for something to be said to exist physically, it would need to be expressable unambiguously in spacetime. If it is ambiguous in nature, then it is paradoxical-- and that which is paradoxical is easily expressed in mind, but not easily expressed in any sense that one should call "physical."
