Re: your words wring thru me like some kind of sonnet
Posted by diogenes on 2026-November-1 18:25:01, SundayIn reply to Re: your words wring thru me like some kind of sonnet posted by Chuck on 2026-October-31 23:27:47, Saturday
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Quantum mechanics is an empirical science; it is about the perceptible, physical world. Elementary particles are not individually perceptible, but they are perceptible in aggregate, they have effects on perceptible objects, and they are conceived as occupying perceptible space, that is, they do not inhabit a different space to that occupied by ordinary perceptible objects, such as my desk lamp. My positing the existence of elementary particles is really no different to my positing an iron core to the Earth, which I am also incapable of perceiving directly. There are interesting and puzzling philosophical issues which arise when we consider the relation of the entities posited by physics to the quotidian objects of our experience, but these belong to the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of physics. By a spiritual reality I mean (roughly) a reality beyond the physical, such that no constituent of this reality has any spatial relation to anything within the physical universe; a world of minds or spirits that are no mere epiphenomenon of any material organisation (e.g. a brain) but have an independent reality and operate independently of physical laws or constraints; a world, therefore, whose miraculous intrusion into the physical universe involves a suspension of normal physical causality. It is this parallel reality, the behind-the-scenes machinery, invisible to us now but supposed to become visible to us post-mortem, in which I do not believe and in which I am incapable of believing. |
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