#philsci #philsky

Likewise. Please do keep in touch about what you find!

Yeah that does indeed seem to track very well. Yet another thing I should explore. This is all fascinating! Thank you, sincerely.

Thanks for sharing. You definitely piqued my interest. I’ll give it a read!

What gives your suspicion teeth in my mind is the fact that Bohr is always deserving of the benefit of the doubt, especially given how opaque his writing on the subject really was.
And the way you’re suggesting the connection would work does not seem wrong from my perspective.

But then, it’s difficult explaining something you don’t understand yourself. And threading through the nuance of what’s necessary to understand about a thing you don’t understand is incredibly subtle.

That would be interesting. And definitely worth pondering/exploring further.

Isn’t part of the problem with Copenhagen that Bohr was generally incredibly opaque in his writing and thinking?

Yeah this seems interesting. I’ll definitely think more about it. My impression of Copenhagen has always been that it’s very deflationist about reality. But maybe that’s not entirely fair?

It’s an interesting thought though. I’m going to think more about whether the comparison works in the way you’re suggesting.

Hmm. No? I may be wrong, but I don’t think that’s the right comparison.

I suggested the celestial sphere as a useful comparison in the article. A model that’s certainly helpful in many ways, which DOES meaningfully reflect reality, but nevertheless a poor representation of what reality is.

Is there anything I can help with? I’d be happy to explain anything you’re not sure about.

Yes! You’re exactly right.
Incidentally, yesterday I posted a longer explanation of the logic and significance of the clarification that I suspect you’d appreciate: cosmicave.org/2025/12/02/a...

(Btw, sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner to all your very good points and keep this discussion alive in the moment. Life and distractions sometimes get in the way.)

This is all very interesting direction. But my thinking remains that existence remains the primary category, and whether abstract or concrete is a subsequent separation. Ultimately, something can't _be_ abstract or concrete unless it _is_, right?

To me, this is the crux. Does an event "exist" when it happens? I think not. I think "to happen" and "to be" are structurally distinct, not to be confused. On one hand, I think doing so essentially caused millennia of confusion. On the other, axiomatically separating them resolves common confusions.

When you think of something "coming to be" like this, are you not imagining that within some prior, more basic "existence"? Apart from a Big Bang singularity, as mathematically described, I struggle to see how. I can't wrap my head around "emergence" without a prior sense of ontological "existence."

100%

Actually, I’ll put it back to you differently:
I don’t think there’s any chance we can “quantize gravity” without first resolving the basic ontological confusion surrounding existence, time, events and space-time.

Eg space-time as an emergent quantum structure is structurally incoherent.

Everything else — intervals, durations, nonlinear systems, evolutionary narratives — only becomes meaningful after we get that foundational parsing right.

If we keep that distinction clean, I think a lot of the conceptual knots in this area begin to loosen.