Are Particles 'Physical Things' or 'Abstract Ideas'?

[Anomalocaris]

I think in this context Illusion might be interpreted as follows:

We are hardwired, or very strongly conditioned by experience, to assume certain observations can only result from certain specific implied attributes of what is bing observed. But these implied attributes may not be there, and observation is actually generated through some exotic, hitherto unfamiliar manner. In this case, implied attribute is an illusion.

[Mudhammam]

Can you tell me what you mean specifically by "physical" and "abstract"?   I like to use terms knowing how they will be interpreted. 

Physical - concrete, substantial, 
   Examples: tables, chairs, earth, wind, fire, air
   It is a world in which we perceive a perpetual flux of different states of material compositions. Never observed truly directly but through the senses and then the organization of sense data in the brain. Becomes more or less substantial (though it still is to some degree) with each level of addition/division: cells, molecules, atoms, particles, and then... well... the line starts to blur between the physical and...

Abstract - theoretical, notional
   Examples: words, concepts, mental images, meaningful frameworks through which we distinguish things like "table," "chair," "earth," etc.
   It is a world in which conceive the notion of flux and its opposite, stasis. In fact, most concepts exist only as other ends of a contradiction or contrary: light, heaviness, black, white, good, evil, etc. (some have speculated that language creates many of the "paradoxes" our rational mind stares at blankly, demarcating relative knowledge from absolute ignorance... there the contradictions and contraries show up go again). Never observed truly directly but through the mind and then the organization of interlocking relationships (think mathematics) that reveal necessary, unchanging principles. Becomes more or less conceptual (though it still is and sometimes to an even fuller degree of abstraction) with each level of addition/division... to the non-logician or non-mathematician.

Both are real, but our experience of each, whether through the senses or through knowledge, can only confirm as much to the extent that each complements the other as much as possible, which we find most satisfactory when intuition and experiment seem to overlap.  

[Anomalocaris]

Since what is "concert and substantial" can never be more than "concert and substantial in theory", it seems to me the distinction between "concert and substantial" and "theoretical and notional" is but an Rbitrary diction based on degree, without fundamental or clear cut difference.

[Alex K]

concert?

[Mudhammam]

Since what is "concert and substantial" can never be more than "concert and substantial in theory", it seems to me the distinction between "concert and substantial" and "theoretical and notional" is but an Rbitrary diction based on degree, without fundamental or clear cut difference.

The difference is found in how substances move (which are then formulated into theory) and how ideas move (which are formulated into grammatical and logical structure). Think of the difference of pure perception as in a waking state unaccompanied by rational labels, and pure conception as in a dream state accompanied by them.

[bennyboy]

Since what is "concert and substantial" can never be more than "concert and substantial in theory", it seems to me the distinction between "concert and substantial" and "theoretical and notional" is but an Rbitrary diction based on degree, without fundamental or clear cut difference.

The difference is found in how substances move (which are then formulated into theory) and how ideas move (which are formulated into grammatical and logical structure). Think of the difference of pure perception as in a waking state unaccompanied by rational labels, and pure conception as in a dream state accompanied by them.

Have you learned about quantum Entanglement, aka spooky motion at a distance?  If you are trying to challenge your view of what things are and how they move, I'd recommend looking there.

[Mudhammam]

The difference is found in how substances move (which are then formulated into theory) and how ideas move (which are formulated into grammatical and logical structure). Think of the difference of pure perception as in a waking state unaccompanied by rational labels, and pure conception as in a dream state accompanied by them.

Have you learned about quantum Entanglement, aka spooky motion at a distance?  If you are trying to challenge your view of what things are and how they move, I'd recommend looking there.

I've read a few books that dealt with it as part of the overall story of QM weirdness. It's what Einstein couldn't accept, and tried to refute with his EPR paper, I believe? And then what John Bell confirmed beyond doubt? From what I've gathered, I can understand why it makes QM seem incomplete. I've also tried to understand superposition and decoherence from reading Wiki articles and whatnot and can't make any headway with it. From what I gather it leaves three real possibilities:
Superluminal connections - simultaneous "telepathic communication" can occur between particles in any region.
Many worlds interpretation - every possible collapse of the wave function occurs in bifurcating universes in which the outcomes we observe are one of an infinite number of others that our many parallel selves also observe.
Superdeterminism - things just are as they are and there is no point in wondering if the outcome could have been different. Past, present, and future form a unified structure already in place, and we just experience conditions determined long ago, perhaps with the illusion that change is linear.

That sound about right?

[JuliaL]

Nature has no basic nature.  It is what it is.
Distinctions between abstract and material, particle or wave, are artificial but required by us.

Perhaps but WE are nature, so it's almost as if one could say, at least in some small pockets of nature, the physical and the abstract are required BY NATURE to make it, to some  degree at least, intelligible to itself.

That these concepts work so well in explaining a record of nature that extends to the "beginning" of time (or the asymmetric "edge") and throughout its possibly infinite spatial magnitude, applying in all places we have been able to verify, leads me to think that these features represent something that is basic and universal, whether it's truly neither or somehow a dualism of both. By "basic" I mean nature as it is versus how creatures (that use equipment developed primarily for survival and not for solving the puzzles that a "deeper understanding" of reality's texture seems to offer) intuitively perceive and conceive it.

Bolding added.

I'm not so convinced that a thin coating of wet slime on a mote in the Milky Way is the means by which nature knows itself. 
I see no requirement or framework in nature that requires or even hints that it has a goal to know itself and that we are it.

Shouldn't being impressed by the degree to which "these concepts work so well" require knowing how well they work in the rest of reality?  We just don't know what's outside of what we can see, be it on the other side of the singularity or beyond the quasars.  Maybe it is a multitude of universes, or a multitude of multiverses locked away from our examination and modeling, how much we don't know....we don't know.  Yes, it is amazing that mathematical models are as predictive as they are, and equally frustrating that they are only as predictive as they are. What we have experienced is that every time we've pushed the horizon of what is known farther out, we've found another horizon.

How would we, as creatures using equipment developed primarily for survival, gain access to this "deeper understanding" or "basic nature" or know it if we found it?  We can make the best use of this equipment, but ultimately, it's a filter we can't avoid. Nature is what nature is.  We can split nature into abstractions and material assemblages, but it is not obliged to follow our lead.  We have to follow it as best we can.

The difference is found in how substances move (which are then formulated into theory) and how ideas move (which are formulated into grammatical and logical structure). Think of the difference of pure perception as in a waking state unaccompanied by rational labels, and pure conception as in a dream state accompanied by them.

I am inclined to think that your second category (ideas) as a subcategory of the first, residing as it does in physical minds. We're on the verge of understanding the generation of consciousness and there is no indication yet of anything non-material. I know we're not there yet, but please have patience, science has only known about neurons for ~200 years and information processing for 50. Shouldn't be long now.

[Anomalocaris]

Nestor

Since what is "concert and substantial" can never be more than "concert and substantial in theory", it seems to me the distinction between "concert and substantial" and "theoretical and notional" is but an Rbitrary diction based on degree, without fundamental or clear cut difference.

The difference is found in how substances move (which are then formulated into theory) and how ideas move (which are formulated into grammatical and logical structure). Think of the difference of pure perception as in a waking state unaccompanied by rational labels, and pure conception as in a dream state accompanied by them.

Define "move".  Theories do not consist of grammatical and logical structure? And is the nature of the "particle" dependent upon whether it is thought by whoever to have been animated by waking state unaccompanied by rational label or by dream state accompanied by rational labels?

[Iroscato]

I feel quite pleased that I understand some of these words. :/