〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

Possible that there are better questions to ask: does this have physical significance? Yes. Should we expect it to be preserved in a more fundamental theory? Yes. Then, here’s why....

But the question of what is being preserved isn’t even obvious lol

Yeah I think it’s still more tractable than asking “what do these mathematical objects, and the particular values this function takes, say the world is like?” I’m unsure if we even have the conceptual resources as humans to answer that

That said, I guess you can still say stuff like “quarks exist” and be counted as a realist

We fool ourselves by giving quarks a name.. eg the definition of quarks is Judy a set of properties at a given energy scale

Damn Judy

got damn JUDY

Philosophy of physics has mostly focused on field and particles when interpreting QFT/saying what we should be realists about, so a lot of its other content has been left out