Nothing about quantum physics violates logic, or else the quantum realm could not exist, since contradictions cannot exist. |
A particle cannot exist in some form and not exist in any form at all simultaneously. A particle cannot occupy only one space and only another space simultaneously. However, there is no logical fact necessitating that a particle must be confined to a single spatial location at once. Only existing exclusively in a single location and existing exclusively in another location is impossible. The difference between these things is stark, clear, and easily proven.
That the quantum world behaves differently than the matter we directly perceive, in actuality, should not surprise rationalists at all, since 1) there is nothing necessary about any set of scientific laws (they could all change or could have been different) and 2) believing that the quantum level must resemble "normal" natural phenomena commits the fallacy of composition. Quantum physics might be an additional killing blow to scientific uniformitarianism--the idea that scientific laws are or must be uniform across all of time and space, an idea that logic alone undermines--but to conclude that it defies logic reveals a deep ignorance of both logic and quantum physics. Nothing can be incompatible with logic, or else that thing would not be a component of reality.
A thing, immaterial or material, can only be what it is. If a particle is not what it is, then it is something else: but then that something else is what it is! The laws of logic cannot be violated because they cannot be false. If a particle exists, then it cannot simultaneously not exist. It will always follow from the existence of a single particle, however small, that matter exists. But a particle could certainly, at least in a hypothetical sense, be in two places at once.
Why, then, do people think it is logically impossible for a subatomic particle to appear in multiple spatial areas? A simple examination of the concept proves that there is nothing impossible about this at all, whereas it is objectively impossible for a particle to both exist and not exist simultaneously. This involves contradiction; the former does not. Some people have at tendency to label foreign ideas or facts "irrational," despite the stupidity of doing so. Nothing is or can be irrational. Phenomena in the natural world, contrarily, could take any form that is not logically impossible, even if it means particles at the subatomic level existing in multiple locations at once.
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