Re:The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday December 07, 2018 @11:26AM
(#18628973)
> The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist.
But that isn't what I said, I said that from a scientific perspective there is no meaningful distinction, which is exactly what you're saying. Its existence or lack thereof is irrelevant because it cannot be measured.
That might be going to far. To an electric field an uncharged particle "doesn't exist," but that doesn't actually mean that uncharged particles don't exist. Likewise there could be particles that don't interact with any known force, or even particles that interact with nothing. The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. It's a similar story for consciousness, which is at least purported to interact with things, although the interaction is one-way in the "wrong" direction.