The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also (...) underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

In a recent no-go theorem [Bong et al., Nature Physics (2020)], we proved that the predictions of unitary quantum mechanics for an extended Wigner’s friend scenario are incompatible with any theory satisfying three metaphysical assumptions, the conjunction of which we call “Local Friendliness”: Absoluteness of Observed Events, Locality and No-Superdeterminism. In this paper (based on an invited talk for the QBism jubilee at the 2019 Växjö conference) I discuss the implications of this theorem for QBism, as seen from the point (...) of view of experimental metaphysics. I argue that the key distinction between QBism and realist interpretations of quantum mechanics is best understood in terms of their adherence to different theories of truth: the pragmatist versus the correspondence theories. I argue that a productive pathway to resolve the measurement problem within a pragmatist view involves taking seriously the perspective of quantum betting agents, even those in what I call a “Wigner bubble”. The notion of reality afforded by QBism, I propose, will correspond to the invariant elements of any theory that has pragmatic value to all rational agents—that is, the elements that are invariant upon changes of agent perspectives. The classical notion of ‘event’ is not among those invariants, even when those events are observed by some agent. Neither are quantum states. Nevertheless, I argue that far from solipsism, a personalist view of quantum states is an expression of its precise opposite: Copernicanism. (shrink)

A two boundary quantum mechanics without time ordered causal structure is advocated as consistent theory. The apparent causal structure of usual “near future” macroscopic phenomena is attributed to a cosmological asymmetry and to rules governing the transition between microscopic to macroscopic observations. Our interest is a heuristic understanding of the resulting macroscopic physics.

A two boundary quantum mechanics incorporating a big bang/big crunch universe is carefully considered. After a short motivation of the concept we address the central question how a proposed a-causal quantum universe can be consistent with what is known about macroscopia and how it might find experimental support.

The traditional analysis of the basic version of the double-slit experiment leads to the conclusion that wave-particle duality is a fundamental fact of nature. However, such a conclusion means to imply that we are not only required to have two contradictory pictures of reality but also compelled to abandon the objectiveness of the truth values, “true” and “false”. Yet, even if we could accept wave-like behavior of quantum particles as the best explanation for the build-up of an interference pattern in (...) the double-slit experiment, without the objectivity of the truth values we would never have certainty regarding any statement about the world. The present paper discusses ways to reconcile the correct description of the double-slit experiment with the objectiveness of “true” and “false”. (shrink)

The article first of all holds that environmental regulation has failed. This is because it is too weak to prevent the overstepping of ecological boundaries by humanity. In this legal regulation is...

The literature on physicalism often fails to elucidate, I think, what the word physical in physical ism precisely means. Philosophers speak at times of an ideal set of fundamental physical facts, or they stipulate that physical means non-mental , such that all fundamental physical facts are fundamental facts pertaining to the non-mental. In this article, I will probe physicalism in the very much tangible framework of quantum mechanics. Although this theory, unlike “ideal physics” or some “final theory of non-mentality”, is (...) an incomplete theory of the world, I believe this analysis will be of value, if for nothing else, at least for bringing some taste of physical reality, as it were, back to the debate. First, I will introduce a broad characterization of the physicalist credo. In Sect. 2, I will provide a rather quick review of quantum mechanics and some of its current interpretations. In Sect. 3, the notion of quantum non-separability will be analyzed, which will facilitate a discussion of the wave function ontology in Sect. 4. In Sects. 5 and 6, I will explore competing views on the implications of this ontology. In Sect. 7, I will argue that the prior results, based on a thoroughly realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, support only a weak version of non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

The “memory of water” was a major international controversy that remains unresolved. Taken seriously or not, this hypothesis leads to logical contradictions in both cases. Indeed, if this hypothesis is held as wrong, then we have to explain how a physiological signal emerged from the background and we have to elucidate a bulk of coherent results. If this hypothesis is held as true, we must explain why these experiments were difficult to reproduce by other teams and why some blind experiments (...) were so disturbing for the expected outcomes. In this article, a third way is proposed by modeling these experiments in a quantum-like probabilistic model. It is interesting to note that this model does not need the hypothesis of the “memory of water” and, nevertheless, all the features of Benveniste’s experiments are taken into account (emergence of a signal from the background, difficulties faced by other teams in terms of reproducibility, disturbances during blind experiments, and apparent “jumps of activity” between samples). In conclusion, it is proposed that the cognitive states of the experimenter exhibited quantum-like properties during Benveniste’s experiments. (shrink)

In this comment we critically review an argument against the existence of objective physical outcomes, recently proposed by Healey [1]. We show that his gedankenexperiment, based on a combination of “Wigner’s friend” scenarios and Bell’s inequalities, suffers from the main criticism, that the computed correlation functions entering the Bell’s inequality are in principle experimentally inaccessible, and hence the author’s claim is in principle not testable. We discuss perspectives for fixing that by adapting the proposed protocol and show that this, however, (...) makes Healey’s argument virtually equivalent to other previous, similar proposals that he explicitly criticises. (shrink)

The reduction of a quantum mechanical wave function by the entry of a datum into the consciousness of an observer is used, in a semirealistic neurochemical model, to bring about excitation of a nerve cell in that observer's central nervous system. It is suggested that mind can induce muscular movements by choosing to note data originating from specialized elements of the nervous system. Only the freedom to note or not to note a relevant datum is postulated for the observer's mind; (...) the consequences of either choice are deterministic on the neural scale of events, so that quantum indeterminacy is consistent with physiological determinacy. The proposed mind-body coupling depends on the possibility of the biological evolution of a macroscopic device which has strikingly different neural correlates of its pure and mixed quantum states, respectively. An example of such a device is outlined in terms of components which are familiar from existing nervous systems. (shrink)

Hugh Everett III proposed his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. He sought to address the theory’s determinate record and probability problems by showing that, while counterintuitive, pure wave mechanics was nevertheless empirically faithful and hence empirical acceptable. We will consider what Everett meant by empirical faithfulness. The suggestion will be that empirical faithfulness is well understood as a weak variety of empirical adequacy. The thought is that the very idea of empirical (...) adequacy might be renegotiated in the context of a new physical theory given the theory’s other virtues. Everett’s argument for pure wave mechanics provides a concrete example of such a renegotiation. (shrink)

Quantum–mechanical systems may be understood in terms of information. When they interact, they modify the information they carry or represent in two, and only two, ways: by selecting a part of the initial amount of (potential) information and by sharing information with other systems. As a consequence, quantum systems are informationally shielded. These features are shown to be general features of nature. In particular, it is shown that matter arises from quantum–mechanical processes through the constitution of larger ensembles that share (...) some information while living organisms make use of a special form of information selection. (shrink)

Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (QM) works perfectly well for all practical purposes. Once one admits, however, that a successful scientific theory is supposed not only to make predictions but also to tell us a story about the world in which we live, a philosophical problem emerges: in the specific case of QM, it is not possible to associate with the theory a unique scientific image of the world; there are several images. The fact that the theory may be compatible with distinct (...) ontologies, and that those ontologies may themselves be associated with a plurality of metaphysical approaches, gives rise to the problem of metaphysical underdetermination. This paper concludes that the available metametaphysical criteria fail to deliver objectivity in theory choice, and it puts forward its own criterion based on a tension between two methods of metaphysical inquiry: one that is closely related to science and another that is not. (shrink)

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre—and why that’s a good thing Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental (...) questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open—to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated—or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens. According to Schwitzgebel’s “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism—a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities. (shrink)

The rising interest, in the late 20th century, in the foundations of quantum physics, a subject in which Franco Selleri has excelled, has suggested the fair question: how did it become so? The current answer says that experiments have allowed to bring into the laboratories some previous gedanken experiments, beginning with those about EPR and related to Bell’s inequalities. I want to explore an alternative view, by which there would have been, before Bell’s inequalities experimental tests, a change in the (...) views shared by physicists concerning the intellectual status of that issue. I will take three cases which will serve as the threads of our story: the connections between Bohm’s causal interpretation and Bell’s inequalities; Wigner’s ideas on the measurement problem; and finally Everett’s relative states formulation. In the end, I will discuss how those threads were gathered together by creating foundations of quantum physics as a field of research. (shrink)

The problem of measurement is often considered an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the philosophical position that their authors endorse. I will review some of them and analyze their relevance. The phenomenon of decoherence is often presented as a solution lying inside the pure quantum formalism and not demanding any particular philosophical assumption. Nevertheless, a widely debated question is to (...) decide between two different interpretations. The first one is to consider that the decoherence process has the effect to actually project a superposed state into one of its classically interpretable component, hence doing the same job as the reduction postulate. For the second one, decoherence is only a way to show why no macroscopic superposed state can be observed, so explaining the classical appearance of the macroscopic world, while the quantum entanglement between the system, the apparatus and the environment never disappears. In this case, explaining why only one single definite outcome is observed remains to do. In this paper, I examine the arguments that have been given for and against both interpretations and defend a new position, the “Convivial Solipsism”, according to which the outcome that is observed is relative to the observer, different but in close parallel to the Everett’s interpretation and sharing also some similarities with Rovelli’s relational interpretation and Quantum Bayesianism. I also show how “Convivial Solipsism” can help getting a new standpoint about the EPR paradox providing a way out of the seemingly unavoidable non-locality of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

An expression of the Lindbladian form is proposed that ensures an unambiguous time-continuous reduction of the initial system-pointer wave-packet to one in which the readings and the observable’s values are aligned, formalized as the transition from an outer product to an inner product of the system’s and apparatus’ density matrices. The jump operators are in the basis of the observables, with uniquely determined parameters derived from the measurement set-up (thereby differing from S. Weinberg’s Lindbladian resolution of wave-packet formalism) and conforming (...) to Born’s probability rules. The novelty lies in formalising the adaptability of the surroundings (including the measuring device) to the mode of observation. Accordingly, the transition is of finite duration (in contrast to its instantaneousness in the von Neumann’s formulation). This duration is estimated for a simple half-spin-like model. (shrink)

Relational Quantum Mechanics is an interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Carlo Rovelli. Rovelli argues that, in the same spirit as Einstein’s theory of relativity, physical quantities can only have definite values relative to an observer. Relational Quantum Mechanics is hereby able to offer a principled explanation of the problem of nested measurement, also known as Wigner’s friend. Since quantum states are taken to be relative states that depend on both the system and the observer, there is no inconsistency in (...) the descriptions of the observers. Federico Laudisa has recently argued, however, that Rovelli’s description of Wigner’s friend is ambiguous, because it does not take into account the correlation between the observer and the quantum system. He argues that if this correlation is taken into account, the problem with Wigner’s friend disappears and, therefore, a relativization of quantum states is not necessary. I will show that Laudisa’s criticism is not justified. To the extent that the correlation can be accurately reflected, the problem of Wigner’s friend remains. An interpretation of quantum mechanics that provides a solution to it, like Relational Quantum Mechanics, is therefore a welcome one. (shrink)

1. Realism. Physicists claim rightly to speak about reality. But what does “reality” mean?2. The Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). We consider CI as a minimal semantics for quantum theory, leaving ways open for additional interpretation.3. The Measuring Process. Several interpretations of the process as given in the liteature are discussed.4. Realistic Interpretation. Discussion of the de Broglie-Bohm-Bell interpretation. If well formulated, it is not a necessary consequence of quantum theory but cannot be excluded.

The model of the world proposed by Whitehead provides a natural theoretical framework in which to imbed quantum theory. This model accords with the ontological ideas of Heisenberg, and also with Einstein's view that physical theories should refer nominally to the objective physical situation, rather than our knowledge of that system. Whitehead imposed on his model the relativistic requirement that what happens in any given spacetime region be determined only by what has happened in its absolute past, i.e., in the (...) backward light-cone drawn from that region. This requirement must be modified, for it is inconsistent with the implications of quantum theory expressed by a generalized version of Bell's theorem. Revamping the causal spacetime structure of the Whitehead-Heisenberg ontology to bring it into accord with the generalized Bell's theorem creates the possibility of a nonlocal causal covariant theory that accords with the statistical prediction of quantum theory. (shrink)

It is argued that an adequate scientific treatment of biological systems requires the use of an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that the propensity interpretation proposed by Popper and others, when applied to the brain, leads to a natural representation of conscious process within the quantum-mechanical description of brain process. Thus quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, has a natural place for consciousness and, moreover, in a sense to be discussed, even requires it.

Bas van Fraassen claims that materialism involves false consciousness. The thesis that matter is all that there is, he says, fails to rule out any kinds of theories. The false consciousness consists in taking materialism to be cognitive rather than an existential stance, or attitude, of deference to the current content of science in matters of ontology, and a favourable attitude to completeness claims about the content of science at a time. The main argument Van Fraassen provides for saying that (...) materialism is not cognitive is an account according to which materialism has responded, so far, to changes in science by abandoning previous hallmarks of the material, and accepting new ones instead of by taking materialism to have been refuted. I argue that van Fraassen’s conclusions run far ahead of what his arguments establish. The fact of revision and revolution in the history of science, and the undoubted provisionality and incompleteness of science as we have it, do indeed tell against simply letting current science determine what the physical is for philosophical purposes. But the alternative to betting on current science need not be unconditional open-endedness. The changes that materialists have accepted so far do not, furthermore, support the false consciousness interpretation. The reason for this is not that materialists will swallow anything, but rather that the changes accepted are consistent with the truth of materialism when appropriately characterized. (shrink)

The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind. . ???aop.label???

The emperor's new mind (hereafter Emperor) is an attempt to put forward a scientific alternative to the viewpoint of according to which mental activity is merely the acting out of some algorithmic procedure. John Searle and other thinkers have likewise argued that mere calculation does not, of itself, evoke conscious mental attributes, such as understanding or intentionality, but they are still prepared to accept the action the brain, like that of any other physical object, could in principle be simulated by (...) a computer. In Emperor I go further than this and suggest that the outward manifestations ofconscious mental activity cannot even be properly simulated by calculation. To support this view, I use various arguments to show that the results of mathematical insight, in particular, do not seem to be obtained algorithmically. The main thrust ofthis work, however, is to present an overview ofthe present state of physical understanding and to show that an important gap exists at the point where, quantum and classical physics meet, as well as to speculate on how the conscious brain might be taking advantage ofwhatever new physics is needed to fill this gap to achieve its nonalgorithmic effects. (shrink)

A critical re-examination of the history of the concepts of space (including spacetime of general relativity and relativistic quantum field theory) reveals a basic ontological elusiveness of spatial extension, while, at the same time, highlighting the fact that its epistemic primacy seems to be unavoidably imposed on us (as stated by A.Einstein “giving up the extensional continuum … is like to breathe in airless space”). On the other hand, Planck’s discovery of the atomization of action leads to the fundamental recognition (...) of an ontology of non-spatial, abstract entities (Quine) for the quantum level of reality (QT), as distinguished from the necessarily spatio-temporal, experimental revelations (measurements). The elementary quantum act (measured by Planck’s constant) has neither duration nor extension, and any genuinely quantum process literally does not belong in the Raum and time of our experience. As Heisenberg stresses: “Während also die klassische Physik ein objectives Geschehen in Raum and Zeit zum Gegenstand hat, für dessen Existenz seine Beobachtung völlig irrelevant war, behandelt die Quantentheorie Vorgänge, die sozusagen nur in den Momenten der Beobachtung als raumzeitliche Phänomene aufleuchten, und über die in der zwischenzeit anschaulische physikalische Aussagen sinloss sind”. An admittedly speculative, hazardous conjecture is then advanced concerning the relation of such quantum ontology with the role of the pre-phenomenal continuum (Husserl) in the perception of macroscopically distinguishable objects in the Raum and time of our experience. Although rather venturesome, it brings together important philosophical issues. Coherently with recent general results in works on the foundations of QT, it is assumed that the linearity of quantum dynamical evolution does not apply to the central nervous system of living beings at a certain level of the evolutionary ramification and at the pre-conscious stage of subjectivity. Accordingly, corresponding to the onset of a non-linear dynamic evolution, a ‘primary spatial’ reduction is ‘continually’ taking place, thereby constituting the neural precondition for the experience of distinguishable macroscopic objects in the continuous spatial extension. While preventing the theoretically possible quantum superpositions of macroscopic objects from being perceivable by living beings, the ‘primary reduction’ has no effect on the standard processes concerning quantum level entities involved in laboratory man-made experiments. In this connection, an experimental check which might falsify the conjecture is briefly discussed. The approach suggested here, if sound, leads to a naturalization of that part of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics than can survive the Euclidean catastrophe. According to such naturalized transcendentalism, “space can well be transcendental without the axioms being so”, in agreement with a well-known statement by Boltzman. Finally, as far as QT is concerned, the conjecture entails that a scheme for quantum measurement of the von Neumann type cannot even ‘leave the ground’, vindicating Bohr’s viewpoint. A quantum theory of measurement, in a proper sense, turns out to be unnecessary and in fact impossible. (shrink)