Well, it seems like you have very high standards for “epistemic footing”; indeed standards so high that nothing can meet them. I’m willing to settle for mere empirical verification, mathematical elegance, and logical coherence. All of which are satisfied by our present understanding of quantum field theory.
The controversy over “underlying reality” continues because all theories of underlying reality reproduce identical experimental predictions, so arguments in this area are philosophy rather than physics, and so rather inconclusive.
Of course we don’t know how to reconcile our empirically valid theory of quantum mechanics with our empirically valid theory of gravity, so at least one of the theories is wrong.
I think my standards for epistemic footing are exactly what you mention. What Ii’m saying is that, without an explanation of why quantum mechanics works as it does, it’s not really a privileged level of explanation. Explanations at higher levels of analysis—chemical, psychological, etc—can all have those properties and be adequate in themselves. Coherence across levels is of course valuable as it’s more logical coherence.
Well, it seems like you have very high standards for “epistemic footing”; indeed standards so high that nothing can meet them. I’m willing to settle for mere empirical verification, mathematical elegance, and logical coherence. All of which are satisfied by our present understanding of quantum field theory.
The controversy over “underlying reality” continues because all theories of underlying reality reproduce identical experimental predictions, so arguments in this area are philosophy rather than physics, and so rather inconclusive.
Of course we don’t know how to reconcile our empirically valid theory of quantum mechanics with our empirically valid theory of gravity, so at least one of the theories is wrong.
I think my standards for epistemic footing are exactly what you mention. What Ii’m saying is that, without an explanation of why quantum mechanics works as it does, it’s not really a privileged level of explanation. Explanations at higher levels of analysis—chemical, psychological, etc—can all have those properties and be adequate in themselves. Coherence across levels is of course valuable as it’s more logical coherence.