Przekład na podstawie: Tim Maudlin, „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics”, w: The Oxford ... more Przekład na podstawie: Tim Maudlin, „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics”, w: The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, red. Michael J. Loux i Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 461–487 Przełożony tu na język polski tekst „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics” Tima Maudlina stanowi rozdział z The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Autor omawia w nim sześć ważnych zagadnień metafizycznych, na które fizyka kwantowa rzuca nowe światło. Każde z nich naświetla z punktu widzenia trzech podstawowych interpretacji mechaniki kwantowej: teorii kolapsu funkcji falowej (von Neumanna lub GRW), teorii zmiennych ukrytych (Bohm) i interpretacji wieloświatowej (Everett). Omówione zagadnienia to determinizm, dookreśloność wartości wielkości fizycznych, rola obserwatora, nieoznaczoność i komplementarność, logika kwantowa, a także splątanie kwantowe i nielokalność.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Feb 1, 2020
We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly exami... more We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly examine the role conservation laws play in different classical contexts. In such contexts we find conservation laws to be useful, but often not essential. Next we consider the quantum setting, where the conceptual problems of the standard formalism obstruct a rigorous analysis of the issue. We then analyze the fate of energy conservation within the various viable paths to address such conceptual problems; in all cases we find no satisfactory way to define a (useful) notion of energy that is generically conserved. Finally, we focus on the implications of this for the semiclassical gravity program and conclude that Einstein's equations cannot be said to always hold. shortcuts would be just as great. But as logically compelling as this observation is, it does not address a deeper attachment to energy conservation as the fundamental physical principle of the universe. In a certain state of mind, even the tiniest, most practically insignificant violation of the conservation of energy is almost unthinkable. Attachment to the principle seems to run much deeper than mere empirical grounds can account for, as if the violation of the conservation law would be wrong. This sense of the deep foundational status of the conservation of energy poses yet another question, viz. Why should energy be conserved? What is the source of this veneration of the principle, which makes any violation of it, however small, seem so momentous? This question leads us to the last in our series, the simplest and deepest question, which sheds light on all the rest, namely What is energy? 2.2 The pre-Socratic view Western philosophy traces back to the pre-Socratic Nature-Philosophers. The pre-Socratics were a mixed bag in terms of orientation, style, and method, but pride of place for the very first philosopher in the Western tradition is commonly awarded to Thales. And the bumper-sticker version of Thales is that he held the view that All is Water. Why should this somewhat unexpected pronouncement constitute the dawn of Western philosophy and perhaps of Western theoretical physics to boot? The key insight accorded to Thales was the notion that beneath all the complex and variegated appearances of the world lay a single common fundamental substance. Such a view requires one to largely discount the way that the world presents itself to the senses in favor of a rational theory of what is really going on. The world is not, as it appears to be, populated by completely diverse sorts of things. Rather, it is really just one sort of thing, a fundamental unity that presents itself in different superficial guises. Why water? This is speculative, but the ancient tetrad of four elements-earth, air, fire, and water-make much more sense as a proposal for an account of the physical world if we understand them not as what we call "elements" but what we call "states of matter". On this view, earth, air, fire and water really are better understood as what we would call solid, gas, plasma, and liquid. If someone today were to say that the universe is made of solids, liquids, gases and plasmas they would not sound too far off the mark, as far as it goes. So
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Jun 1, 2010
The standard mathematical account of the sub-metrical geometry of a space employs topology, whose... more The standard mathematical account of the sub-metrical geometry of a space employs topology, whose foundational concept is the open set. This proves to be an unhappy choice for discrete spaces, and offers no insight into the physical origin of geometrical structure. I outline an alternative, the Theory of Linear Structures, whose foundational concept is the line. Application to Relativistic space-time reveals that the whole geometry of space-time derives from temporal structure. In this sense, instead of spatializing time, Relativity temporalizes space.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Dec 1, 1994
There was a time, earlier in this century, when philosophers of science could unselfconsciously a... more There was a time, earlier in this century, when philosophers of science could unselfconsciously author books with titles like The Structure of Science or The Logic of Scienti$c Discovery, intending, among other aims, to elucidate general methodological and structural principles of any scientific enterprise. In the post-Kuhnian era, any such pretensions to universality in the philosophy of science must be defended against the claim that science is parochial, determined by local standards of evidence, method, and explanation. If the history of science is a succession of competing paradigms, with all details of correct scientific practice up for grabs and no objective standpoint from which the paradigms can be judged, then the genre exemplified by the work of Popper, Hempel and Nagel should pass into obsolescence. There are sociologists of science who would gladly heap the first shovelfuls of dirt on the coffin of universal methodology. Nonetheless, the project of identifying general principles of scientific practice has not been abandoned. Bayesians continue to insist that acceptable inferences must display a fixed formal structure. Clark Glymour (1980) has argued that similar patterns of confirmation can be discerned in the work of Newton, Dalton, Einstein and Freud. So a fault line exists in the field of philosophy of science between the heirs of Carnap and those of Kuhn, with a looming prospect that the divergent approaches will simply lose contact with one another, ceasing even to address the critiques of the rival camp. Perhaps some peaceful coexistence can be arranged, or perhaps these views of science are entirely irreconcilable, but in either case, continuing discussion is imperative. Roberto Torretti's Creative Understanding: Philosophical Rejections on Physics provides an admirable forum for such a discussion. In many ways, the book harkens back to the earlier era. It is organized into five chapters, each of which analyzes a
In "Temporal Passage and the 'No Alternate Possibilities Argument'", Jonathan Tallant takes up on... more In "Temporal Passage and the 'No Alternate Possibilities Argument'", Jonathan Tallant takes up one objection based on the observation that if time passes at the rate of one second per second there is no other possible rate at which it could pass. The argument rests on the premise that if time passes at some rate then it could have passed at some other rate. Since no alternative rate seems to be coherent, one concludes that time cannot pass at all. The obvious weak point of the NAP is the premise itself.
The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been consi... more The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.
At least since the work of Tarski, the Liar paradox has stood in the way of an acceptable account... more At least since the work of Tarski, the Liar paradox has stood in the way of an acceptable account of the notion of truth. It has been less noticed that once one admits a truth predicate into a formal language, along with intuitively valid inferences involving the truth predicate, standard classical logic becomes inconsistent. So, any acceptable account of truth must both explicate how sentences get the truth values they have and amend classical logic to avoid the inconsistency. A natural account of a trivalent semantics arises from treating the problem of assigning truth values to sentences as akin to a boundary‐value problem in physics. The resulting theory solves the Liar paradox while avoiding the usual ‘revenge’ problems. It also suggests a natural modification of classical logic that blocks the paradoxical reasoning. This semantic theory is wedded to an account of the normative standards governing assertion and denial of sentence and a metaphysical analysis truth and factuality. The result is an account in which sentences like the Liar sentence are neither true nor false, and correspond to no facts.
Accounts of both rational credence and of objective chance have always confronted difficulties as... more Accounts of both rational credence and of objective chance have always confronted difficulties associated with events that are assigned "probability zero" by the usual Kolmogorov probability function used to model the situation. One sort of solution recommends extending the number field used to represent credences and chances to the surreals or hyperreals. But the correct solutionthe solution that always respects the Euclidean property-is to eliminate numbers from the fundamental representation of credence and chance altogether in favor of a system of relations. This solution also sheds light on other paradoxes, such as the Banach-Tarski paradox and the St.
Przekład na podstawie: Tim Maudlin, „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics”, w: The Oxford ... more Przekład na podstawie: Tim Maudlin, „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics”, w: The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, red. Michael J. Loux i Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 461–487 Przełożony tu na język polski tekst „Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics” Tima Maudlina stanowi rozdział z The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Autor omawia w nim sześć ważnych zagadnień metafizycznych, na które fizyka kwantowa rzuca nowe światło. Każde z nich naświetla z punktu widzenia trzech podstawowych interpretacji mechaniki kwantowej: teorii kolapsu funkcji falowej (von Neumanna lub GRW), teorii zmiennych ukrytych (Bohm) i interpretacji wieloświatowej (Everett). Omówione zagadnienia to determinizm, dookreśloność wartości wielkości fizycznych, rola obserwatora, nieoznaczoność i komplementarność, logika kwantowa, a także splątanie kwantowe i nielokalność.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Feb 1, 2020
We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly exami... more We start by surveying the history of the idea of a fundamental conservation law and briefly examine the role conservation laws play in different classical contexts. In such contexts we find conservation laws to be useful, but often not essential. Next we consider the quantum setting, where the conceptual problems of the standard formalism obstruct a rigorous analysis of the issue. We then analyze the fate of energy conservation within the various viable paths to address such conceptual problems; in all cases we find no satisfactory way to define a (useful) notion of energy that is generically conserved. Finally, we focus on the implications of this for the semiclassical gravity program and conclude that Einstein's equations cannot be said to always hold. shortcuts would be just as great. But as logically compelling as this observation is, it does not address a deeper attachment to energy conservation as the fundamental physical principle of the universe. In a certain state of mind, even the tiniest, most practically insignificant violation of the conservation of energy is almost unthinkable. Attachment to the principle seems to run much deeper than mere empirical grounds can account for, as if the violation of the conservation law would be wrong. This sense of the deep foundational status of the conservation of energy poses yet another question, viz. Why should energy be conserved? What is the source of this veneration of the principle, which makes any violation of it, however small, seem so momentous? This question leads us to the last in our series, the simplest and deepest question, which sheds light on all the rest, namely What is energy? 2.2 The pre-Socratic view Western philosophy traces back to the pre-Socratic Nature-Philosophers. The pre-Socratics were a mixed bag in terms of orientation, style, and method, but pride of place for the very first philosopher in the Western tradition is commonly awarded to Thales. And the bumper-sticker version of Thales is that he held the view that All is Water. Why should this somewhat unexpected pronouncement constitute the dawn of Western philosophy and perhaps of Western theoretical physics to boot? The key insight accorded to Thales was the notion that beneath all the complex and variegated appearances of the world lay a single common fundamental substance. Such a view requires one to largely discount the way that the world presents itself to the senses in favor of a rational theory of what is really going on. The world is not, as it appears to be, populated by completely diverse sorts of things. Rather, it is really just one sort of thing, a fundamental unity that presents itself in different superficial guises. Why water? This is speculative, but the ancient tetrad of four elements-earth, air, fire, and water-make much more sense as a proposal for an account of the physical world if we understand them not as what we call "elements" but what we call "states of matter". On this view, earth, air, fire and water really are better understood as what we would call solid, gas, plasma, and liquid. If someone today were to say that the universe is made of solids, liquids, gases and plasmas they would not sound too far off the mark, as far as it goes. So
Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Jun 1, 2010
The standard mathematical account of the sub-metrical geometry of a space employs topology, whose... more The standard mathematical account of the sub-metrical geometry of a space employs topology, whose foundational concept is the open set. This proves to be an unhappy choice for discrete spaces, and offers no insight into the physical origin of geometrical structure. I outline an alternative, the Theory of Linear Structures, whose foundational concept is the line. Application to Relativistic space-time reveals that the whole geometry of space-time derives from temporal structure. In this sense, instead of spatializing time, Relativity temporalizes space.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Dec 1, 1994
There was a time, earlier in this century, when philosophers of science could unselfconsciously a... more There was a time, earlier in this century, when philosophers of science could unselfconsciously author books with titles like The Structure of Science or The Logic of Scienti$c Discovery, intending, among other aims, to elucidate general methodological and structural principles of any scientific enterprise. In the post-Kuhnian era, any such pretensions to universality in the philosophy of science must be defended against the claim that science is parochial, determined by local standards of evidence, method, and explanation. If the history of science is a succession of competing paradigms, with all details of correct scientific practice up for grabs and no objective standpoint from which the paradigms can be judged, then the genre exemplified by the work of Popper, Hempel and Nagel should pass into obsolescence. There are sociologists of science who would gladly heap the first shovelfuls of dirt on the coffin of universal methodology. Nonetheless, the project of identifying general principles of scientific practice has not been abandoned. Bayesians continue to insist that acceptable inferences must display a fixed formal structure. Clark Glymour (1980) has argued that similar patterns of confirmation can be discerned in the work of Newton, Dalton, Einstein and Freud. So a fault line exists in the field of philosophy of science between the heirs of Carnap and those of Kuhn, with a looming prospect that the divergent approaches will simply lose contact with one another, ceasing even to address the critiques of the rival camp. Perhaps some peaceful coexistence can be arranged, or perhaps these views of science are entirely irreconcilable, but in either case, continuing discussion is imperative. Roberto Torretti's Creative Understanding: Philosophical Rejections on Physics provides an admirable forum for such a discussion. In many ways, the book harkens back to the earlier era. It is organized into five chapters, each of which analyzes a
In "Temporal Passage and the 'No Alternate Possibilities Argument'", Jonathan Tallant takes up on... more In "Temporal Passage and the 'No Alternate Possibilities Argument'", Jonathan Tallant takes up one objection based on the observation that if time passes at the rate of one second per second there is no other possible rate at which it could pass. The argument rests on the premise that if time passes at some rate then it could have passed at some other rate. Since no alternative rate seems to be coherent, one concludes that time cannot pass at all. The obvious weak point of the NAP is the premise itself.
The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been consi... more The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.
At least since the work of Tarski, the Liar paradox has stood in the way of an acceptable account... more At least since the work of Tarski, the Liar paradox has stood in the way of an acceptable account of the notion of truth. It has been less noticed that once one admits a truth predicate into a formal language, along with intuitively valid inferences involving the truth predicate, standard classical logic becomes inconsistent. So, any acceptable account of truth must both explicate how sentences get the truth values they have and amend classical logic to avoid the inconsistency. A natural account of a trivalent semantics arises from treating the problem of assigning truth values to sentences as akin to a boundary‐value problem in physics. The resulting theory solves the Liar paradox while avoiding the usual ‘revenge’ problems. It also suggests a natural modification of classical logic that blocks the paradoxical reasoning. This semantic theory is wedded to an account of the normative standards governing assertion and denial of sentence and a metaphysical analysis truth and factuality. The result is an account in which sentences like the Liar sentence are neither true nor false, and correspond to no facts.
Accounts of both rational credence and of objective chance have always confronted difficulties as... more Accounts of both rational credence and of objective chance have always confronted difficulties associated with events that are assigned "probability zero" by the usual Kolmogorov probability function used to model the situation. One sort of solution recommends extending the number field used to represent credences and chances to the surreals or hyperreals. But the correct solutionthe solution that always respects the Euclidean property-is to eliminate numbers from the fundamental representation of credence and chance altogether in favor of a system of relations. This solution also sheds light on other paradoxes, such as the Banach-Tarski paradox and the St.
Quantum mechanics predicts many surprising phenomena, including the two-slit interference of elec... more Quantum mechanics predicts many surprising phenomena, including the two-slit interference of electrons. It has often been claimed that these phenomena cannot be understood in classical terms. But the meaning of “classical” is often not precisely specified. One might, for example, interpret it as “classical physics” or “classical logic” or “classical probability theory”. Quantum mechanics also suffers from a conceptual difficulty known as the measurement problem. Early in his career, Hilary Putnam believed that modifications of classical logic could both solve the measurement problem and account for the two-slit phenomena. Over 40 years later he had abandoned quantum logic in favor of the investigation of various theories—using classical logic and probability theory—that can accomplish these tasks. The trajectory from Putnam’s earlier views to his later views illustrates the difficulty trying to solve physical problems with alterations of logic or mathematics.
In the recent paper “Is a Time Symmetric Interpretation of Quantum Theory Possible Without Retroc... more In the recent paper “Is a Time Symmetric Interpretation of Quantum Theory Possible Without Retrocausality?”, Mattew Leifer and Matthew Pusey argue that the answer to their title question is “no”. Unfortunately, the central proof offered in the paper contains a fatal error, and the conclusion cannot be established. Interpretations of quantum theory without retrocausality can be time symmetric not only in the traditional sense but in Leifer and Pusey’s supposedly stricter sense. There appear to be no prospects for proving any analogous theorem.
Since Stephen Hawking's original 1975 paper on black hole evaporation, there has been a consensus... more Since Stephen Hawking's original 1975 paper on black hole evaporation, there has been a consensus that the problem of "loss of information" is both deep and troubling. It is also thought that resolution of the problem may hold some conceptual keys to the unification of gravity with the other forces. I argue that this consensus view is mistaken. The so-called "information loss paradox" arises rather from the inaccurate application of foundational principles, involving both mathematical and conceptual errors. The resources for resolving the "paradox" are familiar and uncontroversial, as has been pointed out in the literature. The problem ought to have been dismissed 40 years ago. Recent radical attempts to solve the problem are blind alleys, solutions in search of a problem.
Since Stephen Hawking's original 1975 paper on black hole evaporation, there has been a consensus... more Since Stephen Hawking's original 1975 paper on black hole evaporation, there has been a consensus that the problem of "loss of information" is both deep and troubling. It is also thought that resolution of the problem may hold some conceptual keys to the unification of gravity with the other forces. I argue that this consensus view is mistaken. The so-called "information loss paradox" arises rather from the inaccurate application of foundational principles, involving both mathematical and conceptual errors. The resources for resolving the "paradox" are familiar and uncontroversial, as has been pointed out in the literature. The problem ought to have been dismissed 40 years ago. Recent radical attempts to solve the problem are blind alleys, solutions in search of a problem.
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