Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://iai.tv/articles/reality-has-no-u..._auid=2020

INTRO: Thinking that reality bottoms out in a fundamental level is a commonly held belief in both philosophy and physics. But Tuomas Tahko argues that alternatives to this foundational picture are equally compatible with the evidence. For example, we can interpret what the Standard Model of particle physics says about quarks in a coherentist light rather than a foundationalist one: since quarks depend on each other for their existence, quarks do not exist independently – something we normally think is true of fundamental entities. We should therefore not prejudge what the structure of reality might look merely based on our intuition that it might be foundational... (MORE - details)

I think it is a mistake to view reality as reducible to discrete and independent units. Therein lies the ghost of mechanism, of everything being less real and defined alone by its physical components. Of reality always deferred to some abstract realm of particles and properties.

But reality is a wholistic affair of emergent phenomena arising independently of its components. The existence of wholes shows there is novelty and freedom in the hierarchal levels of reducible parts. Because reality is wholistic, it is also impactful and immediately given as real in itself. We don't react to mere plant cells. We react to the tree in itself, a foundational entity that transcends its compositionality. Everything real is interactive and indeterminate as an entity in itself, including ourselves in our being a whole self or conscious person. I suppose this view could be labeled a form of panpsychism, but I prefer it to be unlabled.