I indeed assumed you’d say that a particle is not the thing to which you would reduce it, but if so then I’d be glad to know what a wave function actually is…
The usual understanding, as I see it, is that a wave function is only a mathematical description, just as Newton’s laws describe forces, but not entities in themselves, right?

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Rabbi, it’s not very nice to call those people whom you know quite well and who claim this (I don’t think it’s those people from Haaretz) two-bit philosophers….

A wave function describes something, just as an electric field describes something. If you ask me what an electric field is, I’ll answer you with its mathematical-scientific description. There is no meaning to the question of what it is in itself. The same is true of the wave function.

Why is it not nice? In my view it’s very nice. It’s not a derogatory label but a description of what they do. By the way, I don’t know them well (or at least I’m not aware of anyone I know well who says this).

But a wave function is only a description; it is not an entity in itself. Just like if you say that an electric field operates only given that there are charges in the surroundings, then you are in effect claiming that it is not a real entity. Or alternatively, if you claim that the electric charge induces in its surroundings some kind of force-carrying particles, then again you are claiming that the electric field describes something real behind it.
And as far as I know, a wave function that describes an electron and many other things—isn’t that a description of infinitely many discrete wave functions? If so, then surely a wave function only describes and is not an entity in itself.

I explained. Now go and learn the rest.

I can’t deny that, but I tried to draw out maybe some further understanding.
In any case, then how do you explain the fact that you need a combination of infinitely many discrete wave functions in order to represent real bodies? Isn’t there a problem here of something like infinite regress? Or is it more like Zeno’s arrow, though here it seems a bit different to me (because there you add a description of speed, whereas here we’re talking about objects).

As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a word here that connects to another word. But there’s no point getting into the technicalities of quantum theory here.

Okay, thanks. It’s just that this is how I know people talk about describing real particles, so that’s why I asked about it.

In any case, what is the reason you don’t accept panpsychism? Is it because even if, in the end, the “matter” in the universe is really entities described by wave functions, we are still dealing with an object for whose properties there is no need at all to add mental components? Just as we do not simply think that a stone has a mental component, even though theoretically one could add that as one of its properties. Is the same true of the basic matter described by a wave function?
Is that the reason you said this is nonsense?
But if so, someone might say that since we are not talking about waves or particles, we have to imagine that we are dealing with something spiritual, because nothing we know can realize such things. A kind of “mental of the gaps.”

There is something there that is described by a wave function (and that is what we call matter). Every additional word is unnecessary and does not say much. Bringing psychism into this is just an empty quip.