An electron is a posit?

You admit that microbes are mind-independent but then say they are assembled from data from the senses? How could my chair be assembled from an interpretation of data? This is strange stuff. My chair was actually assembled out of plastic, wood, and leather, as far as I know.

This is saying almost nothing. Except that if I were dead, I would not be conscious. How this relates to our discussion, I do not know. I find it also strange you wanted to remind me of this.

And here you go again. I can't count how many times you've reiterated this. I consider my knowing that my chair is made of wood, plastic, and leather nothing science related. In fact, it's almost common sense if you glanced at my chair. But if you want to call me a scientific idealist simply because I think that may chair isn't made of sense data, fine by me.

I'm going to tell my girlfriend tonight that the food she just made is assembled from sense data, and see what kind of loony stare I get.

To repeat, he would (of course) see microbes, but he would not see that they were microbes. The distinction between, "seeing" and "seeing that".

It's not that simple. I understand you perfectly but it's not that simple. The question is whether I care enough to explain it. What's in a name? A name refers not just to shapes or sounds or other names, but to a cluster of all of these and more. Your statement above takes too much for granted.

Thank you. I will look more into this.

I still claim that my chair is not assembled from sense data. Neither is tonight's dinner.

I'm sorry we disagree. I wish there were some way I could make you believe that the food you eat is really food, and not sense data. Alas, things aren't always so easy.

What are all the different meanings of "real"?

Just to stress this point again. I'm no solipsist. There's a world out there. Of course. The issue is the relationship of the perceiver and the perceived. And this is a classic issue in philosophy, for good reasons.

Most of us will agree, I think, that we do not experience objects directly. Our senses give us information from which we construct our personal experience of the objective world (the world-in-itself).

We have nothing but this personal experience of the world. The world is experience personally, individually. But because we are the same species who develop a common language in relation to common needs, we have inferred/conceptually constructed the concept of the world-in-itself.
The world is out there. This is a safe (however unprovable) assumption. But we only experience this world thru human "hardware" and "software." The hardware is our biology. The software is our culture. This is an oversimplification, because the biology/culture dichotomy may be in other contexts deceptive.

No one is required to do hard thinking on this sort of issue. I just happen to enjoy it. It passes the time. You can do just fine in the world without such thought. But I like philosophy. Sometimes "common sense" is a euphemism for prejudice.

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I don't think one can make a list, as "real" can always be used in new contexts. I don't conceive of words as static entities.

Suppose I am in the desert and someone points to a place in the distance and asks, "Is that oasis real, or is it a mirage?". (That's the context). Is there more than one meaning of "real" in that sentence. If so, what are they?

I think it's pretty clear in that sentence. A thirsty man has a taste for water, not philosophy. A man flying overhead in a private jet might say "Is that man's experience of that mirage real?" (We'll have to assume he's heard the man's question by means of a listening device and that his aerial view assures him that there is no oasis nearby.)

It is a posit in the sense it is posited to explain what we observe. But that's all right. To quote Quine, "to posit is not to patronize". Electrons exist. And, "exist" is univocal. I think you are asking whether electrons "really"exist. Let me quell your anxiety. They do.

Well then, do they exist as a wave, or as a particle?

Because based on our observation of phenomena on the macro scale, it is impossible to imagine how something can exist as both.

then why are you so confident that they can be said to exist? Is it because we have been told they do, by physicists, and they are part of 'the standard model' of matter?

I don't know whether they are waves or particles. That's a question for quantum theorists, not philosophers.

I don't know whether they are waves or particles. That's a question for quantum theorists, not philosophers.

If anyone knows of any good work on the issue of scientific instrumentalism (either pro or for or neutral or somewhat in between) that is on the internet in a pdf format, let me know. Especially if you can send me the book.

According to scientific instrumentalism, the aim of scientific theories is not to discover truth but rather to produce intellectual structures that provide adequate predictions of what is observed and useful frameworks for answering questions and solving problems in a given domain. From this philosophical perspective, scientific theory represents convenient intellectual structures for predicting or describing in more abstract terms observable data, not actual structures in the world.

Instrumentalists argues that many theories are instrumentally useful yet false. Ptolemaic astronomy, which posited celestial spheres, makes many true predictions, but is nevertheless false. Churchland claims that as science develops, beliefs and desires will go the way celestial spheres have gone.

In philosophy of science, the other view which is highly successful in accounting for scientific knowledge is the instrumentalist view. On this account, only the results of the experiments are viewed as being real. That is, the experimental observations themselves, void of any interpretation, constitute the only brute facts of nature. Whatever interpretation, or scientific theory, we construct later on is just a tool to explain the experimental observations. For example, in the context of Millikan's experiment, the 'electron' is an inferred entity from the experiments. An electron is simply a tool for understanding why the total charge in the oil drop changed by an integer multiple of a fundamental quantity, namely e. In this context, instrumentalists remain agnostic as to the existence of an electron. For them, the only thing that exists is the experimental observation not the theoretical constructs that are devised later to help us comprehend what is observed. Hence, on this view, experiments cannot answer those nettling questions in ontology of what exits. They can only provide us with data from which we can construct a cognitive map which we use to understand the physical world.

But here are two philosophical questions arising from the 'one-electron universe' hypothesis:

1. Is it true that no physical object can be in more than one place at the same time?

2. If it is true, do we know this a priori?

But here are two philosophical questions arising from the 'one-electron universe' hypothesis:

1. Is it true that no physical object can be in more than one place at the same time?

2. If it is true, do we know this a priori?