Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
(1) You are merely assuming what you are hoping to argue. If I say that you cannot "be a particle", because there is no such thing, how does your argument still proceed to unification?
(2) But what a mouthful that "probabilistically as appropriate" part is! How does a particle "do something random" when it is "appropriate" to do so?
(3) We might be able to unify everything with which we are familiar, like probability concepts, but we will never unify everything there is. Does the thought ever become unified with that which is thinking it?
If we are not capable of unification, then we have no unification. How do we profit scientifically from imagining something exists that we are not capable of demonstrating exists? Like someone using the North star to navigate, we work for unification because that is the proper direction that science is pointed in, not because we think complete unification is attainable.
(4)Except for all the "cracks" that always remain, such as the need to apply boundary conditions to our equations, and the need to be able to design experiments within our technological and intellectual capability.
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(1) No I'm not. Particles have been observed. To assert otherwise is either to argue for a nontestable theory of existence such as "reality doesn't exist, it's all a dream", or else is vexatious.
(2) So you don't like what I say because it's a mouthful. What kind of an argument is that? Quantum theory is described probabilistically, so I am saying nothing unusual or novel here. I didn't really need to say it, given that our existing theories are probabilistic, but I was predicting a common but fallacious objection before someone made it. (I have discovered the need to do that here).
(3) Pythagoras' theorem was there even before people discovered it. If we haven't yet discovered Pythagoras and I say that in principle geometry must exist, then I am saying "it exists because it is there to be found". You say "ah but if we don't find it then it doesn't exist
for us", well, I don't think that is the kind of non-existence OP is interested in. Obviously it is unknowable whether we will ever find something, even if we can prove it is there to be found. Rather like the well-ordering of the reals that is predicted by an existence argument based upon the Axiom of Choice, but which no one thinks can ever be exhibited.
(4) I said "complete and consistent", ie no cracks. Electro-weak-strong unification which sticks 3 laws together without cracks. If there are actually cracks in reality, then there are situations when the particle doesn't "know" what to do. Which I think is nonsense, and that is the only real point I am making here.
Edit: In (3) the Axiom of Choice suggestion is not a good analogy on second thoughts. A better one is the Navier-Stokes equations, which we have found but can't solve. So we have a theory but can't use it. But the theory is still there.