A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

@Benny.....Our descriptions are acknowledged as abstraction. It all falls apart from the very beginning Benny. Your comments are all very sensible, and very logical - regarding concepts and the limits of concepts. But it appears that there is more to the world than concept, and QM isn't a lifeboat that can save any old thing you toss in it with a wave of the hand - QM is still about "stuff". We use math because our machinery is incapable of perceiving these interactions or expressing them in familiar terms...abstraction is required because it is the only means available to us. I can't see infrared (I have no "infrared qualia", and that should be telling....) so it's a number..because some things can, infrared is present, even though I cant see it. It's useful to have a means with which to describe that. That says something about us, not the nature of reality.

Why do you think QM is still about "stuff"? What is a photon, for example, and what does it look like? What shape is it, what volume, and what location? I'd say the minimal requirements for saying "stuff" exists is that you can observe it to have a non-zero size, and a definite location in space and time. A sizeless "thing" is about as real-sounding as an uncreated creator, don't you think?

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"It's math only from here on in" in terms of technological, and therefore, experimental limitations, but it's not as if numbers exist distinct from material objects, allowing ourselves a conception of matter that involves force fields and empty space that jitters.

Relationships, including mathematical ones, certainly can exist and be described aside from the "real" things with which we associate them. That's what we do, for example, in computer simulation. Or maybe I misunderstand you?

Anyway, I'm not sure that scientists agree with you on this. For example, what's the location of an electron before you measure it? Does it have a definite location, or is it just a function that resolves at the instant of measurement?