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  • Idealism poll
    But something is ontologically primary. — "Marchesk

    Ontological primacy gets a bit murky when we're talking about quantum mechanics, though.

    My understanding is that it would be valid to say that quantum fields are in a sense primary with respect to particles (and thus all matter), but that there is a reciprocal ontological relationship between the two nonetheless.That is, while certain quantum fields potentiate certain particles (and the latter could not exist without the former) it may be just as correct to say that particles potentiate quantum fields. For example, we would say that the Higgs field gives rise to the Higgs boson, but if there were no Higgs bosons, then the Higgs field wouldn't exist in any coherent sense because it wouldn't be doing anything.

    It seems to be, then, that we can't have particles without fields, but that we also can't have fields without particles. To that extent, it wouldn't make sense to say that either is primary.