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  1. David Wallace the emergent multiverse: Quantum theory according to the Everett interpretation.Lev Vaidman - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):465-468.
    We have, then, a theory which is objectively causal and continuous, while at the same time subjectively probabilistic and discontinuous. It can lay claim to a certain completeness, since it applies to all systems, of whatever size, and is still capable of explaining the appearance of the macroscopic world. The price, however, is the abandonment of the concept of the uniqueness of the observer, with its somewhat disconcerting philosophical implications.
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  • Quantum Locality.Robert B. Griffiths - 2011 - Foundations of Physics 41 (4):705-733.
    It is argued that while quantum mechanics contains nonlocal or entangled states, the instantaneous or nonlocal influences sometimes thought to be present due to violations of Bell inequalities in fact arise from mistaken attempts to apply classical concepts and introduce probabilities in a manner inconsistent with the Hilbert space structure of standard quantum mechanics. Instead, Einstein locality is a valid quantum principle: objective properties of individual quantum systems do not change when something is done to another noninteracting system. There is (...)
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  • Quantum Mechanics and Frequentism: A Reply to Ismael.Michael Strevens - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4):575-577.
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  • Entropy - A Guide for the Perplexed.Roman Frigg & Charlotte Werndl - 2011 - In Claus Beisbart & Stephan Hartmann (eds.), Probabilities in Physics. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 115-142.
    Entropy is ubiquitous in physics, and it plays important roles in numerous other disciplines ranging from logic and statistics to biology and economics. However, a closer look reveals a complicated picture: entropy is defined differently in different contexts, and even within the same domain different notions of entropy are at work. Some of these are defined in terms of probabilities, others are not. The aim of this chapter is to arrive at an understanding of some of the most important notions (...)
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  • Deep metaphysical indeterminacy.Bradford Skow - 2010 - Philosophical Quarterly 60 (241):851 - 858.
    A recent theory of metaphysical indeterminacy says that metaphysical indeterminacy is multiple actuality: there is metaphysical indeterminacy when there are many 'complete precisifications of reality'. But it is possible for there to be metaphysical indeterminacy even when it is impossible to precisify reality completely. The orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics illustrates this possibility. So this theory of metaphysical indeterminacy is not adequate.
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  • Presentism and quantum gravity.Bradley Monton - 2006 - In Dennis Geert Bernardus Johan Dieks (ed.), The ontology of spacetime. Boston: Elsevier.
    There is a philosophical tradition of arguing against presentism, the thesis that only presently existing things exist, on the basis of its incompatibility with fundamental physics. I grant that presentism is incompatible with special and general relativity, but argue that presentism is not incompatible with quantum gravity, because there are some theories of quantum gravity that utilize a fixed foliation of spacetime. I reply to various objections to this defense of presentism, and point out a flaw in Gödel's modal argument (...)
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  • A philosopher looks at quantum mechanics (again).Hilary Putnam - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):615-634.
    A Philosopher Looks at Quantum Mechanics’ (Putnam [1965]) explained why the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a philosophical problem in detail, but with only the necessary minimum of technicalities, in the hope of making the difficulties intelligible to as wide an audience as possible. When I wrote it, I had not seen Bell ([1964]), nor (of course) had I seen Ghirardi et al. ([1986]). And I did not discuss the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation. For all these reasons, I have decided to (...)
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  • Conspiracy theories of quantum mechanics.Peter J. Lewis - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):359-381.
    It has long been recognized that a local hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics can in principle be constructed, provided one is willing to countenance pre-measurement correlations between the properties of measured systems and measuring devices. However, this ‘conspiratorial’ approach is typically dismissed out of hand. In this article I examine the justification for dismissing conspiracy theories of quantum mechanics. I consider the existing arguments against such theories, and find them to be less than conclusive. I suggest a more powerful (...)
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  • The Nature of Appearance in Kant’s Transcendentalism: A Seman- tico-Cognitive Analysis.Sergey L. Katrechko - 2018 - Kantian Journal 37 (3):41-55.
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  • Randomness Is Unpredictability.Antony Eagle - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):749-790.
    The concept of randomness has been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical literature, and when philosophers have thought about it, they have usually acquiesced in views about the concept that are fundamentally flawed. After indicating the ways in which these accounts are flawed, I propose that randomness is to be understood as a special case of the epistemic concept of the unpredictability of a process. This proposal arguably captures the intuitive desiderata for the concept of randomness; at least it should suggest (...)
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  • Empirical adequacy and the availability of reliable records in quantum mechanics.Jeffrey A. Barrett - 1996 - Philosophy of Science 63 (1):49-64.
    In order to judge whether a theory is empirically adequate one must have epistemic access to reliable records of past measurement results that can be compared against the predictions of the theory. Some formulations of quantum mechanics fail to satisfy this condition. The standard theory without the collapse postulate is an example. Bell's reading of Everett's relative-state formulation is another. Furthermore, there are formulations of quantum mechanics that only satisfy this condition for a special class of observers, formulations whose empirical (...)
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  • Quantum holism and the philosophy of mind.Michael Esfeld - 1999 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (1):23-38.
    This paper attempts to build a bridge between the interpretation of quantum theory and the philosophy of mind. In contrast to other such attempts, the bridge which this paper suggests does not consist in extending features of quantum theory to the philosophy of mind. The argument of this paper is that the discussion about a revision of the Cartesian tradition in current philosophy of mind is relevant to the interpretation of quantum theory: taking this discussion into account sharpens up the (...)
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  • ‘Many Minds’ Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics.Michael Lockwood - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2):159-88.
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  • (6 other versions)Consciousness and its place in nature.David Chalmers - 2003 - In Ted Warfield (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. pp. 102--142.
    Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature. In twentieth-century philosophy, this dilemma is (...)
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  • (1 other version)A New Problem for Quantum Mechanics.Alexander Meehan - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:000-000.
    In this article I raise a new problem for quantum mechanics, which I call the control problem. Like the measurement problem, the control problem places a fundamental constraint on quantum theories. The characteristic feature of the problem is its focus on state preparation. In particular, whereas the measurement problem turns on a premise about the completeness of the quantum state ('no hidden variables'), the control problem turns on a premise about our ability to prepare or control quantum states. After raising (...)
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  • (1 other version)The measurement problem revisited.Shan Gao - 2019 - Synthese 196 (1):299-311.
    It has been realized that the measurement problem of quantum mechanics is essentially the determinate-experience problem, and in order to solve the problem, the physical state representing the measurement result is required to be also the physical state on which the mental state of an observer supervenes. This necessitates a systematic analysis of the forms of psychophysical connection in the solutions to the measurement problem. In this paper, I propose a new, mentalistic formulation of the measurement problem which lays more (...)
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  • Realism about the wave function.Eddy Keming Chen - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (7):e12611.
    A century after the discovery of quantum mechanics, the meaning of quantum mechanics still remains elusive. This is largely due to the puzzling nature of the wave function, the central object in quantum mechanics. If we are realists about quantum mechanics, how should we understand the wave function? What does it represent? What is its physical meaning? Answering these questions would improve our understanding of what it means to be a realist about quantum mechanics. In this survey article, I review (...)
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  • A consciousness-based quantum objective collapse model.Elias Okon & Miguel Ángel Sebastián - 2020 - Synthese 197 (9):3947-3967.
    Ever since the early days of quantum mechanics it has been suggested that consciousness could be linked to the collapse of the wave function. However, no detailed account of such an interplay is usually provided. In this paper we present an objective collapse model where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in (...)
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  • Unreal observables.Bryan W. Roberts - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1265-1274.
    This note argues that quantum observables can include not just self-adjoint operators, but any member of the class of normal operators, including those with non-real eigenvalues. Concrete experiments, statistics, and symmetries are all expressed in this more general context. However, this more general class of observables also introduces a new restriction on which sets of operators can be interpreted as observables at once. These sets are referred to here as 'sharp sets.
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  • Quantum metaphysical indeterminacy.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2599–2627.
    On many currently live interpretations, quantum mechanics violates the classical supposition of value definiteness, according to which the properties of a given particle or system have precise values at all times. Here we consider whether either metaphysical supervaluationist or determinable-based approaches to metaphysical indeterminacy can accommodate quantum metaphysical indeterminacy (QMI). We start by discussing the standard theoretical indicator of QMI, and distinguishing three seemingly different sources of QMI (S1). We then show that previous arguments for the conclusion that metaphysical supervaluationism (...)
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  • A new way of understanding the wave function: Shan Gao: The meaning of the wave function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, x+189pp, $140 HB.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - Metascience 27 (1):87-90.
    This is a review of a book by Shan Gao called "The meaning of the wave function", Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
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  • Why Interpret Quantum Physics?Edward MacKinnon - 2016 - Open Journal of Philosophy 6 (1):86-102.
    This article probes the question of what interpretations of quantum mechanics actually accomplish. In other domains, which are briefly considered, interpretations serve to make alien systematizations intelligible to us. This often involves clarifying the status of their implicit ontology. A survey of interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics supports the evaluation that these interpretations make a contribution to philosophy, but not to physics. Interpretations of quantum field theory are polarized by the divergence between the Lagrangian field theory that led to the (...)
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  • Ecstatic Language of Early Daoism: A Sufi Point of View.Esmaeil Radpour - 2015 - Transcendent Philosophy Journal 16:213-230.
    Various esoteric traditions apply different modes of expression for the same metaphysical truths. We may name the two most known esoteric languages as ecstatic and scholastic. Early Daoist use of reverse symbolism as for metaphysical truths and its critical way of viewing formalist understanding of traditional teachings, common virtues and popular beliefs show that it applies an ecstatic language, which, being called shaṭḥ in Sufi terminology, has a detailed literature and technical description in Sufism. This article tries, after a short (...)
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  • In Defence of Naiveté: The Conceptual Status of Lagrangian Quantum Field Theory.David Wallace - 2006 - Synthese 151 (1):33-80.
    I analyse the conceptual and mathematical foundations of Lagrangian quantum field theory (QFT) (that is, the ‘naive’ (QFT) used in mainstream physics, as opposed to algebraic quantum field theory). The objective is to see whether Lagrangian (QFT) has a sufficiently firm conceptual and mathematical basis to be a legitimate object of foundational study, or whether it is too ill-defined. The analysis covers renormalisation and infinities, inequivalent representations, and the concept of localised states; the conclusion is that Lagrangian QFT (at least (...)
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  • Approximate Truth and Descriptive Nesting.Jeffrey Alan Barrett - 2008 - Erkenntnis 68 (2):213-224.
    There is good reason to suppose that our best physical theories, quantum mechanics and special relativity, are false if taken together and literally. If they are in fact false, then how should they count as providing knowledge of the physical world? One might imagine that, while strictly false, our best physical theories are nevertheless in some sense probably approximately true. This paper presents a notion of local probable approximate truth in terms of descriptive nesting relations between current and subsequent theories. (...)
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  • The Everett Interpretation.David Wallace - unknown
    The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics - better known as the Many-Worlds Theory - has had a rather uneven reception. Mainstream philosophers have scarcely heard of it, save as science fiction. In philosophy of physics it is well known but has historically been fairly widely rejected. Among physicists, it is taken very seriously indeed, arguably tied for first place in popularity with more traditional operationalist views of quantum mechanics. In this article, I provide a fairly short and self-contained introduction to (...)
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  • Four Tails Problems for Dynamical Collapse Theories.Kelvin J. McQueen - 2015 - Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 49:10-18.
    The primary quantum mechanical equation of motion entails that measurements typically do not have determinate outcomes, but result in superpositions of all possible outcomes. Dynamical collapse theories (e.g. GRW) supplement this equation with a stochastic Gaussian collapse function, intended to collapse the superposition of outcomes into one outcome. But the Gaussian collapses are imperfect in a way that leaves the superpositions intact. This is the tails problem. There are several ways of making this problem more precise. But many authors dismiss (...)
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  • Holismus und Verbindungen zwischen der Philosophie des Geistes und der Philosophie der Physik.Michael Esfeld - 1998 - Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 31 (79):153-174.
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  • Time in Thermodynamics.Jill North - 2011 - In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press. pp. 312--350.
    Or better: time asymmetry in thermodynamics. Better still: time asymmetry in thermodynamic phenomena. “Time in thermodynamics” misleadingly suggests that thermodynamics will tell us about the fundamental nature of time. But we don’t think that thermodynamics is a fundamental theory. It is a theory of macroscopic behavior, often called a “phenomenological science.” And to the extent that physics can tell us about the fundamental features of the world, including such things as the nature of time, we generally think that only fundamental (...)
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  • Undermind.Steven Weinstein - 1996 - Synthese 106 (2):241 - 251.
    David Albert and Barry Loewer have proposed a new interpretation of quantum mechanics which they call the Many Minds interpretation, according to which there are infinitely many minds associated with a given (physical) state of a brain. This interpretation is related to the family of many worlds interpretations insofar as it assumes strictly unitary (Schrödinger) time-evolution of quantum-mechanical systems (no reduction of the wave-packet). The Many Minds interpretation itself is principally motivated by an argument which purports to show that the (...)
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  • The Reliability of Randomized Algorithms.D. Fallis - 2000 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (2):255-271.
    Recently, certain philosophers of mathematics (Fallis [1997]; Womack and Farach [(1997]) have argued that there are no epistemic considerations that should stop mathematicians from using probabilistic methods to establish that mathematical propositions are true. However, mathematicians clearly should not use methods that are unreliable. Unfortunately, due to the fact that randomized algorithms are not really random in practice, there is reason to doubt their reliability. In this paper, I analyze the prospects for establishing that randomized algorithms are reliable. I end (...)
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  • Lewis, P.. Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford University Press. 232pp. [REVIEW]Luis Miguel García Martínez - 2018 - Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 54:431-438.
    Quantum Ontology: A guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics by P. Lewis, is a book with a philosophical orientation devoted to delve into the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed study to the various interpretations of quantum mechanics and their metaphysical consequences in relation to indeterminism, locality, free will, probability, holism and many other topics. Due to its rich philosophical perspective the author has dispensed with the mathematical formalism aiming to a rigorous conceptual approach.
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  • Different Levels of the Meaning of Wave-Particle Duality and a Suspensive Perspective on the Interpretation of Quantum Theory.Yong Wook Cheong & Jinwoong Song - 2014 - Science & Education 23 (5):1011-1030.
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  • Tests for intrinsicness tested.Kelvin J. McQueen & René van Woudenberg - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (11):2935-2950.
    Various tests have been proposed as helps to identify intrinsic properties. This paper compares three prominent tests and shows that they fail to pass adequate verdicts on a set of three properties. The paper examines whether improved versions of the tests can reduce or remove these negative outcomes. We reach the sceptical conclusion that whereas some of the tests must be discarded as inadequate because they don’t yield definite results, the remaining tests depend for their application on the details of (...)
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  • Interpreting Quantum Mechanics in Terms of Random Discontinuous Motion of Particles.Shan Gao - unknown
    This thesis is an attempt to reconstruct the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. First, we argue that the wave function in quantum mechanics is a description of random discontinuous motion of particles, and the modulus square of the wave function gives the probability density of the particles being in certain locations in space. Next, we show that the linear non-relativistic evolution of the wave function of an isolated system obeys the free Schrödinger equation due to the requirements of spacetime translation (...)
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  • Cartwright on wholism.Michael Esfeld - unknown
    This paper proposes a critical examination of the wholism that Cartwright contemplates. The first part spells out the consequences of this position – notably our principled ignorance of nature as a whole. The second part considers that physical theory which is widely claimed to exhibit some sort of wholism, namely quantum physics. I sketch a wholistic model of quantum physics and compare this model to the wholism that Cartwright considers. The result is that – contrary to what Cartwright suggests – (...)
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  • Multiplicity in Everett׳s interpretation of quantum mechanics.Louis Marchildon - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52 (Part B):274-284.
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  • On the Faithful Interpretation of Pure Wave Mechanics.Jeffrey A. Barrett - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (4):693-709.
    Given Hugh Everett III's understanding of the proper cognitive status of physical theories, his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics arguably qualifies as an empirically acceptable physical theory. The argument turns on the precise nature of the relationship that Everett requires between the empirical substructure of an empirically faithful physical theory and experience. On this view, Everett provides a weak resolution to both the determinate record and the probability problems encountered by pure wave mechanics, and does so in a way (...)
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  • Timothy O'Connor, persons and causes (oxford: Oxford university press, 2000).Eric Hiddleston - 2005 - Noûs 39 (3):541–556.
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  • The persistence of memory: Surreal trajectories in Bohm's theory.Jeffrey A. Barrett - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (4):680-703.
    In this paper I describe the history of the surreal trajectories problem and argue that in fact it is not a problem for Bohm's theory. More specifically, I argue that one can take the particle trajectories predicted by Bohm's theory to be the actual trajectories that particles follow and that there is no reason to suppose that good particle detectors are somehow fooled in the context of the surreal trajectories experiments. Rather than showing that Bohm's theory predicts the wrong particle (...)
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  • Putting probabilities first. How Hilbert space generates and constrains them.Michael Janas, Michael Cuffaro & Michel Janssen - manuscript
    We use Bub's (2016) correlation arrays and Pitowksy's (1989b) correlation polytopes to analyze an experimental setup due to Mermin (1981) for measurements on the singlet state of a pair of spin-12 particles. The class of correlations allowed by quantum mechanics in this setup is represented by an elliptope inscribed in a non-signaling cube. The class of correlations allowed by local hidden-variable theories is represented by a tetrahedron inscribed in this elliptope. We extend this analysis to pairs of particles of arbitrary (...)
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  • Emergent Evolutionism, Determinism and Unpredictability.Olivier Sartenaer - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 51:62-68.
    The fact that there exist in nature thoroughly deterministic systems whose future behavior cannot be predicted, no matter how advanced or fined-tune our cognitive and technical abilities turn out to be, has been well established over the last decades or so, essentially in the light of two different theoretical frameworks, namely chaos theory and (some deterministic interpretation of) quantum mechanics. The prime objective of this paper is to show that there actually exists an alternative strategy to ground the divorce between (...)
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  • What time reversal invariance is and why it matters.John Earman - 2002 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16 (3):245 – 264.
    David Albert's Time and Chance (2000) provides a fresh and interesting perspective on the problem of the direction of time. Unfortunately, the book opens with a highly non-standard exposition of time reversal invariance that distorts the subsequent discussion. The present article not only has the remedial goal of setting the record straight about the meaning of time reversal invariance, but it also aims to show how the niceties of this symmetry concept matter to the problem of the direction of time (...)
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  • Relational Holism and Humean Supervenience.George Darby - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (4):773-788.
    It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience , according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for in Lewis's Humean mosaic. But (...)
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  • That Von Neumann did not believe in a physical collapse.Lon Becker - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):121-135.
    Many works intended to introduce interpretive issues in quantum mechanics present John von Neumann as having a view in which measurement produces a physical collapse in the system being measured. In this paper I argue that such a reading of von Neumann is inconsistent with what von Neumann actually says. I show that much of what he says makes no sense on the physical collapse reading, but falls into place if we assume he does not have such a view. I (...)
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  • Curie’s Principle and spontaneous symmetry breaking.John Earman - 2004 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (2 & 3):173 – 198.
    In 1894 Pierre Curie announced what has come to be known as Curie's Principle: the asymmetry of effects must be found in their causes. In the same publication Curie discussed a key feature of what later came to be known as spontaneous symmetry breaking: the phenomena generally do not exhibit the symmetries of the laws that govern them. Philosophers have long been interested in the meaning and status of Curie's Principle. Only comparatively recently have they begun to delve into the (...)
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  • Appearing Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Gravity.Karen Crowther - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Sydney
    Quantum gravity is understood as a theory that, in some sense, unifies general relativity (GR) and quantum theory, and is supposed to replace GR at extremely small distances (high-energies). It may be that quantum gravity represents the breakdown of spacetime geometry described by GR. The relationship between quantum gravity and spacetime has been deemed ``emergence'', and the aim of this thesis is to investigate and explicate this relation. After finding traditional philosophical accounts of emergence to be inappropriate, I develop a (...)
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  • A natural view of perceptual experience.Andrew Scott MacGregor - unknown
    I offer a novel defence of radically externalist theories of perception, via a strikingly spare and broadly physicalist metaphysics. The core, motivating claim is what I call a natural view of perception, according to which perception involves direct awareness of our environment, such that the phenomenology of experience consists of the worldly things perceived, as they appear to the perspective of the subject. To underpin this natural view, I propose a simple metaphysical picture of perception, which identifies the perceptual experience (...)
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  • Entanglement Exchange And Bohmian Mechanics.Nick Huggett & Tiziana Vistarini - 2010 - Manuscrito 33 (1):223-242.
    This paper explains the phenomenon of `entanglement exchange' within the Bohmian approach to quantum mechanics. After explaining Bohmian mechanics and entanglement exchange, in which pairs of particles become entangled without ever interacting causally in the usual, unitary sense, our aim is to use this example, to illustrate how the `pilot wave' mediates non-local correlations. The discussion thus gives a useful new way to think about entanglement exchange, and clarifies the structure of Bohmian mechanics.
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  • Empty waves in Bohmian quantum mechanics.Peter J. Lewis - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (4):787 - 803.
    There is a recurring line of argument in the literature to the effect that Bohm's theory fails to solve the measurement problem. I show that this argument fails in all its variants. Hence Bohm's theory, whatever its drawbacks, at least succeeds in solving the measurement problem. I briefly discuss a similar argument that has been raised against the GRW theory.
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