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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The Map Is Not the Territory

A Reply to John Abramson

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

John Abramson's second response moves our discussion into more interesting territory. I think he is right that we have largely converged on the methodological point. We agree that science should not reject an idea simply because it sounds spiritual or metaphysical. We agree that a claim should expose itself to possible failure. We agree that falsifiability alone is not enough: evidence, predictive success, independent support, explanatory power, and compatibility with established knowledge all matter.

So the disagreement has indeed moved deeper. Abramson now says that the real difference between us is not the line but the map. I begin, he suggests, with one realm—the manifest, measurable world—and regard difficult problems as problems arising within it. He begins by asking whether some problems might instead be "inter-realm" problems, where a deeper structural level is being mistakenly treated as though it were an ordinary object within the manifest world.

This is a fascinating proposal. But I think the central problem remains exactly where I suspected it was in the previous exchange: Abramson's second realm is doing explanatory work before its existence has been established. Nowhere is this more evident than in his interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The Important Distinction: Solving a Problem Versus Redescribing It

Let me begin by saying that I find Abramson's proposed interpretation intellectually interesting. There is nothing absurd about asking whether some apparent paradoxes in physics arise because we are imposing inappropriate conceptual categories on mathematical structures that do not fit them. Science has repeatedly advanced by discovering that apparently contradictory phenomena were artifacts of an inadequate conceptual framework. The classical distinction between matter and energy had to be revised. Absolute space and time had to be abandoned. The idea that particles possess definite properties independent of measurement had to be reconsidered.

So I have no objection whatsoever to asking whether our conceptual categories are sometimes the problem. But there is a difference between saying that perhaps our conceptual framework is inadequate and saying that therefore the phenomenon belongs to another realm. The first is a legitimate scientific hypothesis. The second is a metaphysical interpretation that still needs to earn its place.

This is where I think Abramson moves too quickly.

Entanglement Does Not Necessarily Require a Second Realm

Take quantum entanglement. Abramson's argument is that the paradox disappears if we stop thinking of the entangled particles as two spatially separated objects. Instead, he proposes that the mathematical description refers to one unified structure that is not itself located in space. The two particles are merely two manifestations of this deeper, non-spatial structure.

That is certainly one possible philosophical interpretation. But it is not the only one, and this matters enormously.

Quantum mechanics already tells us that entangled systems cannot always be described as independent local states. The mathematical formalism itself captures this beautifully. We do not need to add a second ontological realm to recognize that the classical picture of two independently existing objects with independently defined properties is inadequate.

The theory already tells us that the whole can be more fundamental than the parts. But that does not automatically mean that the whole exists in another realm.

It may simply mean that our ordinary classical ontology is inadequate at the quantum level.

That is a very different claim.

The phrase "there are not, at that level, two things to be distant" is philosophically suggestive. But it is not yet an explanation of why entanglement occurs. It is a statement about how we should interpret the mathematical formalism.

The equations remain exactly the same. The predictions remain exactly the same. The experimental results remain exactly the same. What changes is the story we tell ourselves about what those equations mean.

That may be valuable. But it is important to distinguish interpretation from empirical explanation.

The Problem with Dissolving Paradoxes

Abramson says that his approach "dissolves" five quantum paradoxes with one move. This is impressive if the move is independently justified. But there is a danger here. Almost any sufficiently broad philosophical framework can dissolve a paradox by changing the conceptual vocabulary in which the paradox is formulated.

Suppose I say that the problem of consciousness disappears once we realize that consciousness is not a physical thing. Perhaps. But I have not necessarily explained consciousness. I have simply rejected one way of framing the question.

Likewise, if I say that the quantum measurement problem disappears because the wavefunction belongs to a deeper structural level while the measured particle belongs to the manifest level, I may have provided an elegant conceptual reinterpretation. But I have not yet demonstrated that such a structural level exists.

The distinction is crucial. Dissolving a question is not necessarily answering it.

Sometimes dissolving a question is exactly the right thing to do. Philosophical progress often consists in realizing that a question was badly posed. But sometimes a problem disappears only because we have moved it somewhere else. That is what I am not yet convinced Abramson has ruled out.

The Second Realm May Be Unnecessary

There is another possibility that Abramson does not sufficiently consider. Perhaps quantum mechanics is simply telling us that reality does not conform to the categories of classical physics. Perhaps the mistake is not that we are trying to describe a non-spatial realm in spatial terms. Perhaps the mistake is assuming that the universe must ultimately conform to any of our familiar conceptual categories.

The quantum world may simply be quantum. It may not be classical. It may not be local in the classical sense. It may not possess definite properties independent of measurement in the classical sense. None of this necessarily requires a second realm.

It may instead require us to accept that the manifest world itself is stranger than our everyday intuitions suggest.

This is an important alternative because it preserves the ontological economy of the scientific picture. Abramson's proposal introduces a new level of reality. My objection is not that this is forbidden. My objection is that it is additional. And whenever we add something to our ontology, the burden of proof falls on us to show why it is necessary.

The Continuum Is Not Yet a Physical Mechanism

Abramson argues that his structural level is independently warranted because it is grounded in mathematics, particularly the structure of the continuum and its completion, developed by Cantor and Dedekind. But here I think we need to be especially careful.

There is an enormous difference between a mathematical structure being well established and that structure being a physical mechanism.

Mathematics provides extraordinarily powerful structures for describing physical reality. But the fact that a mathematical structure exists does not by itself establish that nature instantiates it as an independent ontological level.

The number p exists mathematically. The complex numbers exist mathematically. Hilbert spaces exist mathematically. Set theory exists mathematically. None of this tells us, by itself, what kind of physical reality exists.

The question is always: why should this mathematical structure be interpreted as an additional level of physical reality?

That requires an argument.

And the argument cannot simply be that the mathematics exists, therefore the physical realm it describes exists. Physics is full of mathematical formalisms that are indispensable to calculation without necessarily corresponding one-to-one with physical entities.

The map can be extraordinarily accurate without every feature of the map being a physical object in the territory.

Five Paradoxes—or One Philosophical Intuition?

Abramson's strongest claim is that five quantum problems are all manifestations of the same mistaken assumption. This is where his argument becomes genuinely interesting. But I would like to see the argument tested more rigorously.

Are these really five independent problems that are solved by one mechanism? Or are they five situations in which the same philosophical interpretation has been applied?

There is a difference.

If Abramson's framework predicts that a particular conceptual distinction will resolve a class of problems before examining them, then that would indeed be impressive. If the framework is developed first and then applied retrospectively to five puzzles, the evidence is weaker. This is precisely the distinction between prediction and accommodation.

A theory that predicts something surprising before the evidence appears earns enormous credibility. A theory that explains something after the fact may still be valuable, but it has less evidential force.

Abramson acknowledges that he does not yet have a novel confirmed prediction. I appreciate his honesty about that. But this admission also means that the central claim remains, for now, a philosophical interpretation of existing physics. An interesting one, perhaps. A potentially fruitful one. But still an interpretation.

The Proposed Prediction Is Not Yet a Prediction of the Theory

Abramson's discussion of macroscopic superposition is therefore important. He suggests that if the transition between the structural and manifest levels is a real physical event, then superposition should eventually break down beyond some threshold of size or complexity.

This is certainly testable. But we need to distinguish between the experimental phenomenon and the theoretical explanation.

Scientists are indeed investigating the boundaries of quantum behavior at increasingly large scales. The existence of such experiments does not, by itself, support Abramson's framework. Many different theories might predict departures from ordinary quantum behavior under certain conditions.

The crucial question is whether Abramson's framework predicts a specific threshold that differs from competing theories.

If so, excellent. That would be a real scientific prediction.

If not, then the experiment tests the general possibility of a quantum-classical transition, not specifically the existence of Abramson's proposed second realm.

This is where his argument still needs to become more precise. The test must distinguish his theory from the alternatives. Otherwise, the result may confirm or disconfirm a general physical hypothesis without telling us whether the deeper structural interpretation is correct.

"Methodological Prediction" Is Not Quite the Same Thing

Abramson also proposes a broader methodological prediction: that sorting quantum problems into "intra-realm" and "inter-realm" problems will prove more fruitful than assuming everything belongs to a single manifest world.

I find this plausible as a research heuristic. But I would hesitate to call it a scientific prediction.

Scientists already use conceptual reframing constantly. They ask whether a problem arises from an inadequate model. They change levels of description. They distinguish between effective theories and fundamental theories. They investigate whether apparently separate phenomena have a common underlying explanation.

The suggestion to ask whether a problem is "inter-realm" is therefore not unique in its general form. The interesting part is the specific ontology attached to it. And that ontology remains to be demonstrated.

A heuristic can be useful without being true.

The heliocentric model was useful because it simplified astronomical calculations long before anyone had a complete physical theory of gravitation. Scientific usefulness and ontological truth are related, but they are not identical.

One Realm or Two?

Abramson says I begin with one realm. I would put it slightly differently. I begin with ontological humility.

I do not know whether reality has one level, two levels, ten levels, or an infinite hierarchy. I am not committed to one realm. I am simply unwilling to multiply realms without sufficient evidence.

That distinction matters.

Science has repeatedly shown that reality is stranger than we expected. There is no reason to assume that we have reached the final level of understanding. But there is equally no reason to assume that every mystery requires a deeper ontological level.

Sometimes the answer is a new entity. Sometimes it is a new law. Sometimes it is a new mathematical structure. Sometimes it is a new conceptual framework. And sometimes we discover that the question itself was wrong.

The difficult part is determining which case we are dealing with.

That cannot be decided by philosophical preference alone.

The Deeper Line

So perhaps Abramson is right that the deeper line between us is not about science and spirituality. It is about when we are entitled to move from epistemology to ontology.

I am comfortable saying: "Our current conceptual framework may be inadequate."

Abramson is willing to add: "Perhaps because reality contains a deeper structural level."

I say: "Perhaps."

He says: "Let us investigate whether this possibility explains the evidence."

I say: "Absolutely. But let the evidence decide whether the possibility becomes an ontology."

That is not a fundamental disagreement about scientific standards. It is a disagreement about how far we should travel beyond the evidence while constructing an explanatory framework.

And perhaps this is precisely where the conversation should now go.

I would be genuinely interested in seeing Abramson's full mathematical and physical argument—not because I am convinced that there is a second realm, but because the proposal is now specific enough to deserve serious scrutiny.

If it can produce novel predictions that distinguish it from competing interpretations, if those predictions are confirmed, and if the framework demonstrates explanatory power that cannot be achieved without the proposed structural level, I will happily revise my position.

That is the great advantage of science. It does not require us to settle the map in advance. But it does require us to keep checking the territory.

For now, I remain agnostic about Abramson's second realm. I am not rejecting it because it is metaphysical. I am not rejecting it because it is spiritual. I am not rejecting it because science has no room for such things.

I am simply saying: show me what the second realm predicts that the first realm cannot.

If the answer is there, I will follow the evidence. And if it leads us somewhere genuinely new, I will be delighted to have been wrong about the map.

But until then, I think we should be careful not to confuse an elegant way of dissolving a paradox with a demonstrated discovery about the architecture of reality.

The map may indeed be larger than we think.

The question is whether we have discovered a new territory—or merely drawn a more interesting map.