An electron is a posit?

But asking these questions, doesn't show that the hypothesis that we can have all the evidence we have, and there is no external world is contradictory (or incoherent- whatever that means).

There are problems with skepticism about the external world, but I think that the problems lie with arguments like the argument from illusion and the rest. I don't believe there is a "short way" with this issue by showing there is something self-contradictory about the hypothesis. I think the various arguments have to be examined, and their assumptions exposed.

If you doubt everything, always, how can you advance in this knowledge pursuit? A moment must come when you admit that something is true, and believe it true until it is proven false. Why should we doubt things we believe true just because they might not be true? That seems utterly insane! Smart questioning is preferred over mindless questioning.

This is what I'm saying makes no sense to me. First, what is this strictly speaking direct sense (again contrasted with how we normally perceive the world)? And second, why does the fact that we experience the world with our senses mean that we are not experiencing the world in a strictly speaking direct sense?

In other words, this strictly speaking direct sense (which has been called several different things in this thread and elsewhere) seems made up, in order to support these claims that we aren't perceiving the true external world. It is as if these people have conjured some sort of ethereal realm where no observers are present, and in this realm the true properties exist, untainted or manipulated by perspective!

Maybe he just means what is mind-dependent.

"No, stop that." lol

I do not end with the doubt however. "the moment we do we've gone mad, religious, or poetic." I see the opposite! Or at least I see doubt as a great cure for the "rationale" of the mad, religious, or poetic (leaving poetic in there just for kicks). I think the pursuit of knowledge starts with doubting all things, not that it ends there.

What would it even mean to deny the sense-data thesis? Suppose we deny it, what does it even mean to experience a chair? It does not mean anything. Chairs are not the kind of thing that can be meaningfully said to be experienced (in the strict sense, for surely there are other and more broad uses of the word "experience"), sensations are. Sensations are exactly the sort of thing which we are capable of experiencing, that is, after all, what a sensation is.

And yes it has many names. Kant has a name for the things/objects that cause our sensations, things-in-themselves

No one doubts everything, even though they may think they do. Neither did Descartes. It is not humanly possible to doubt everything, we cannot do it.

If you doubt everything, always, how can you advance in this knowledge pursuit? A moment must come when you admit that something is true, and believe it true until it is proven false. Why should we doubt things we believe true just because they might not be true? That seems utterly insane! Smart questioning is preferred over mindless questioning.

I am confident that we are able to directly observe things. If I look into a mirror and see the reflection of a man pulling the trigger of a gun, then I did not directly observe (but rather indirectly observed) a man pulling the trigger of a gun, but if I look at the man as he pulls the trigger of a gun, then it's not false when I say "yes" to the question when he asks if I directly observed the man pull the gun's trigger.

In one sense of the world "directly" I agree. But in another sense, I cannot. It takes time for light waves to travel to your eye, and then for your brain to arrange a mental picture from these light waves and interpret this picture conceptually. Your brain is locked in the dark of the skull. An observer with different previous experiences would experience and interpret this situation differently, likely at a different speed. We see the light from the Sun when it's already eight seconds old. We conceive of this sun, some of us, as a large nuclear reaction whose energy sustains our planet. This conception is added to sensation by human discourse. This human discourse is part of our concrete or total experience of the "Sun."

You are supposing that what we see must be contemporaneous with our seeing of it. But, apparently, that is not true.

In one sense of the world "directly" I agree. But in another sense, I cannot. It takes time for light waves to travel to your eye, and then for your brain to arrange a mental picture from these light waves and interpret this picture conceptually. Your brain is locked in the dark of the skull. An observer with different previous experiences would experience and interpret this situation differently, likely at a different speed. We see the light from the Sun when it's already eight seconds old. We conceive of this sun, some of us, as a large nuclear reaction whose energy sustains our planet. This conception is added to sensation by human discourse. This human discourse is part of our concrete or total experience of the "Sun."

Yes and not only this but when you see someone you are seeing the light that reflects from them, in a sense like a mirror. So in a sense we never "directly" observe someone.

How is apparently not true? Is that how you see it, at this moment? I'm well aware of scientific abstractions to the contrary. They are useful but philosophically lazy. Common sense is often common prejudice.

Yes, what we experience are the sensations, but we are having the sensations because there is something real that we are perceiving.

What I am against is not that we perceive with our senses. Clearly we do. What I am against is this gap between the external world and our perceptions of the external world - as if they are completely divorced and our sensations cannot be true reflections of the external world. Again, the fact that we perceive the world as we do, is no reason to think we are not experiencing the world directly.

But there is no reason to think we aren't experiencing the 'true' things-in-themselves, is all I'm saying. I think our sensations can provide accurate, true information (they can most certainly give false information too, of course) about things.

Well, because we see stars even when what we actually see is not contemporary with the stars we see. Why do you think it is true (or must be true)?

Then trying to doubt all things is the start. I think it is important to give oneself the opportunity to break down beliefs one has been taught before rebuilding one's foundation.

At the very least the attempt would be a good cure for some of the strong belief systems out there that don't bother trying too hard to back themselves up.

any phenomenological description proper is to be performed from a first person point of view, so as to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as is experienced, or intended, by the subject.

What happens when you cause one photon or electron to be emmited at a time? Does it spread out in all directions? Or does it hit the detector on the other side of the room?

You should look up the "double-split experiment". It will close the gaps in your reasoning.

Um, I think you might need to look it up. I know the experiment quite well. Let me fill you in on something. When we use small particles for the experiment like atoms. You know what happens? It appears as if the particle goes through both slits at the same time. The only way it can do that is if it covers both slits equally. A particle can not do that unless it is a bubble.

"It's the wave nature of electrons that allows them to act in a correlated way in a hydrogen molecule," says Thorsten Weber of the Chemical Sciences Division, another of the experiment's leading researchers. "When two particles are part of the same quantum system, their interactions are not restricted to electromagnetism, for example, or gravity. They also possess quantum coherence -- they share information about their states nonlocally, even when separated by arbitrary distances."

The only way they could behave this way is through my theory that they stretch over space as I have previously stated.

In one sense of the world "directly" I agree. But in another sense, I cannot. It takes time for light waves to travel to your eye, and then for your brain to arrange a mental picture from these light waves and interpret this picture conceptually. Your brain is locked in the dark of the skull. An observer with different previous experiences would experience and interpret this situation differently, likely at a different speed. We see the light from the Sun when it's already eight seconds old. We conceive of this sun, some of us, as a large nuclear reaction whose energy sustains our planet. This conception is added to sensation by human discourse. This human discourse is part of our concrete or total experience of the "Sun."

Which raises the original question again: do electrons exist, or are they a posit? If they are 'a bubble', what is the bubble made of? Because an actual bubble is not irreducible. It occupies space and is created and destroyed.

When someone says - even a Scientist! - that information can be shared non-locally, this actually violates Newtonian principles, does it not?

Wasn't it exactly this which Einstein refused to believe? So you can say it casually, but it still doesn't solve the question as to whether electrons exist, or, if they do, what this means for our conception of the word 'exist'.