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Old 1st January 2018, 05:05 PM   #186
Myriad
The Clarity Is Devastating
 
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Betwixt
Posts: 20,891
What our mere senses and internal electrical impulses appear from all available evidence to be very capable of doing is to create a "chunked" understanding of the external world in terms of an ongoing narrative of objects, beings (with intentions), and events.

Regardless of what it's ultimately made of, an apple tree is in every sense just as real as quantum fields. In fact, quantum fields are far from an adequate description of the nature of an apple tree. The quantum equations for even a single molecule of the cellulose of the wood of the tree are far too complex to calculate their outcomes directly. If our understanding of the external world were limited to direct perception of quantum fields and events, we'd be unable to even perceive the tree; branches, leaves, roots, germination, mitosis, transpiration, seeding, and evolution would all be unfathomable abstractions. I'd say that "a bunch of quantum wavefunctions interacting in complex ways" is a far, far less meaningful or informative explanation for the nature of a tree than "a bunch of electrical impulses interacting in complex ways" is for the generation of consciousness in the brain.

We do not experience any external material thing directly. But even so, only in a bizarre quantum version of mereological nihilism could quantum wave functions of the particles and fields that make up the tree be regarded as real, while the leaves, roots, wood, DNA, and apples are regarded as illusory.
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