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The Ancient Geek's avatar

>But are the premises true?

2 is unsupported,t say the least . Spatial separation is clearly relational.. and clrarly physical, in that it objectively mrasureablr and quantifiable. The only objection would be the folk-physics objection that the physical is *stuff*.

>No matter how you conceive of the atoms—as probability clouds, states of space, fields—the question arises: why don’t the atoms simply “pass through” each other

If you conceive of it in terms of quantum mechanics, the answer is obvious: the pauli exclusion principle means that the electrons...which define the "size" of the atom, since the nucleus is tiny...cannot occupy the same state.. the electron orbitals either have to bounce off each other, or both atoms fuse into a new mutual state, a H2 molecule. No casual "passing through" is allowed.

Consider learning physics.

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DavesNotHere's avatar

“all interaction is non-physical”

What would this mean? How could physical objects be part of a physical universe but their interactions are not part of the physical universe?

My world is full of physical things interacting. If the syllogism is sound, this is an illusion. Either there are physical objects that do not interact physically, or there are not even any physical objects and everything is an illusion.

I can't quite wrap my head around this. It seems less absurd to say that i perceive the appearance of phsyical objects interacting physically, but i do not have a full explanation of how this works.

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