Adam,
I think this is progessing now, as I finally see just how to phrase what I want to say.
By (2), I do not offer any theory or standard. I am making a more basic point: I simply cannot figure out how to interpret “non-perceptibles” in the context you have used it. It is not that I don’t find your theory satisfactory, it is that I don’t find your theory at all. Let me rephrase (2) to get rid of the misleading term “meaningless”:
“The fact that I cannot interpret a fundamental term in your conception is an acceptable or unavoidable situation.”
This seemed to be what you were implying via Heisenberg, that the insistence on complete logical clarification would make science impossible.
If I may digress for a moment, I think you will agree with the following:
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You have ideas, and your aim in writing these posts is to get others to entertain the same ideas in order to accept or reject them.
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If someone has no idea how to interpret the words you are using, they cannot know what ideas you have, so they cannot evaluate them.
That is all I am saying with regard to “non-perceptibles.” The word simply does not communicate anything to me in that context. I would say I am simply asking for clarification, but I anticipate you raising Heisenberg in response to the clarification request. Yet even assuming Heisenberg had a point, surely we can agree that there is a difference between a minor inconsistency or handwave somewhere, and a reader having no inkling of how to interpret a key term of the theory.
This is the case with “non-perceptibles”; the word is no clearer to me in that context than if you had instead written zxqwxzh6fyg. I am not critiquing anything about your theory, because I don’t know what your theory is; I am asking for clarification on your terms in hopes of gaining even the first clue about what a certain part of your theory is intending - a part that seems fundamental to understand in order to evaluate it.
Hence if anything I have written is to be taken as a critique, it could only be, at most, a critique of your word choice. I trust that there is some thought you wish to convey by those words, but the words you have chosen for that purpose have not helped me to find any interpretation.
That is my entire point, but now I would like to present an analogy to flesh out the very same point, and perhaps hint at where I suspect the discussion could lead (which is of course total conjecture at this point).
Imagine a man comes along with a theory that everything was actually shades of gray back in ancient Greek times. Really, everthing was gray, nothing had any hue. At one point he says, “So there was this one ancient Greek guy with a red hat.” The natural response would be, “I thought everything was shades of gray, with no other colors.” Then he says,
“It was, but this guy had a red hat.”
“Isn’t that contradictory?”
“It may be, but so what? You can’t insist on complete logical clarification.”
“Very well, but wouldn’t it be clearer to say that everything was gray except for that guy’s red hat?”
“No, his hat was gray, too. It was both completely gray and no other color…and at the same time completely red and no other color.”
“I don’t think you are getting through to me, because I cannot figure out how to entertain any idea that would correspond with those words.”
“Isn’t the word red clear enough? I mean, look at the sash across the LvMI coat of arms. That is red.”
“It is clear in that context, but in the context of your theory, where as I understand it everything is always and only shades of grey, I cannot interpret the words there was this ancient Greek guy with a red hat. In particular the word red seems meaningless given the premise of the theory. Or rather, I cannot figure out how to interpret the word red in that context.”
“Don’t you remember what I said about complete logical clarification? You are holding me to too high a standard and finding my theory dissatisfying.”
“No, it’s not your theory I find dissatsifying, it’s the fact that I don’t even understand what you intend by the words you are using. Hence I don’t know what your theory even is. That situation is what I find dissatisfying. At most you could say I find your use of terms unclear. Could you choose others?”
“All right. He wore a crimson hat. Or, he wore a scarlet hat.”
“And those are still non-gray colors?”
“Yup.”
“And yet there were no non-gray colors. That is to say, there were non-gray colors, but there were not any non-gray colors.”
“Yeah, you got it.”
“Actually I don’t get it. I still cannot figure out how to interpret those words.”
“Well you see, it’s just like the particle-wave duality. It is contradictory and uninterpretable, but it works for science.”
“How is the particle-wave duality contradictory or uninterpretable? I can interpret it to mean that photons share some characteristics with particles and some characteristics with waves. That doesn’t necessitate any contradictions all by itself.”
“Right, but there actually are contradictions: the photon exists both at one point - and only one point - and at the same time it exists distributed over here and over there.”
“Well I agree, that is a contradiction, or better to say that I have no idea how to interpret those words. Because ‘the photon exists only at one point’ makes me think that the photon cannot exist at any more than one point, yet the words say it does. I cannot imagine such a situation.”
“As Heisenberg said, we have to move beyond the idea that everything can be imagined. Science requires that we imagine unimaginables.”
“No, you see, I cannot imagine such a situation, so how can I evaluate it? You yourself claim not to be able to imagine the situation, yet you speak about it. How is that communicating anything?”
“It is communicating something because it is language, and language communications things.”
“Not always. What if you are just repeating words from your memory, with no thought behind them?”
“Words are thoughts. All thoughts are words, and all words are thoughts.”
“OK, well that is where I cannot agree. But at least now I see that this is the fundamental point where we seem to differ” (with this imaginary historian at least).