After some reflection I would have to say that most of what you write is sensible stuff. Though the definitions are the tricky part, like most discussions of physics when they get down into the weeds.
It is clear that something akin to gluons, W, and Z bosons must exist for the most elegant explanation, otherwise ridiculous complications will need to be introduced to fit observed phenomenon. But there’s always the danger of falling into the trap of thinking of these ‘objects’ as discrete entities, which I am not entirely convinced of. And so I will refrain from using the word ‘exist’.
If you mean ‘exist’ by a discrete object with a unique position persisting across some span of space-time, I’m not entirely sure they do.
Fields, or something akin to fields, clearly do, and so do macro objects of course, but I’m not even entirely convinced that electrons ‘exist‘ in the same sense as the above. They may ‘exist’ in the sense that information ‘exists’.
There‘s also Feynman’s half-in-jest proposal of a one electron universe, which I think has a grain, or several grains, of truth. If that helps you better understand my position.
Hermeneutic ballast is an excellent term! It’s definitely a more concise way of describing its oddities.
Ontological assertions may be avoidable even if some combination of ’spooky action at a distance’, ‘hidden variables’, etc., proved to be the case, but I just don’t see how anyone could make the argument without sacrificing parsimony.
And it seems ever more likely for that to be the case in the reality we live in, given recent trends in cosmology and black hole physics.
Sorry for the late reply,
After some reflection I would have to say that most of what you write is sensible stuff. Though the definitions are the tricky part, like most discussions of physics when they get down into the weeds.
It is clear that something akin to gluons, W, and Z bosons must exist for the most elegant explanation, otherwise ridiculous complications will need to be introduced to fit observed phenomenon. But there’s always the danger of falling into the trap of thinking of these ‘objects’ as discrete entities, which I am not entirely convinced of. And so I will refrain from using the word ‘exist’.
If you mean ‘exist’ by a discrete object with a unique position persisting across some span of space-time, I’m not entirely sure they do.
Fields, or something akin to fields, clearly do, and so do macro objects of course, but I’m not even entirely convinced that electrons ‘exist‘ in the same sense as the above. They may ‘exist’ in the sense that information ‘exists’.
There‘s also Feynman’s half-in-jest proposal of a one electron universe, which I think has a grain, or several grains, of truth. If that helps you better understand my position.
Hermeneutic ballast is an excellent term! It’s definitely a more concise way of describing its oddities.
Ontological assertions may be avoidable even if some combination of ’spooky action at a distance’, ‘hidden variables’, etc., proved to be the case, but I just don’t see how anyone could make the argument without sacrificing parsimony.
And it seems ever more likely for that to be the case in the reality we live in, given recent trends in cosmology and black hole physics.