[Wittrs] QM and Determinism
- From: Joseph Polanik <jpolanik@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:12:09 -0400
Jeremy Bowman wrote:
>Bob Doyle wrote:
>>I find Wittgenstein understands possibility and contingency, which is
>>essential to understanding science today, and its irreducible
>>probabilistic nature. Before quantum mechanics, probability was
>>epistemic - human ignorance, since Heisenberg, chance is ontological
>>and real, the stuff of freedom from mathematical equations and causal
>>chains.
>I don't think it's a great idea to allow one's views on human
>agency/freedom to direct one's interpretation of a scientific
>formalism. But it seems to me that something like that lies behind
>Bob's insistence on a "metaphysical" sort of indeterminism.
>Quantum theory proper does not tell us that the world is
>indeterministic. Rather, one interpretation of quantum theory takes
>the world to be that way.
Conway and Kochen disagree:
"Although, as we show in [The Free Will Theorem], determinism may
formally be shown to be consistent, there is no longer any evidence that
supports it, in view of the fact that classical physics has been
superseded by quantum mechanics, a non-deterministic theory. The import
of the free will theorem is that it is not only current quantum theory,
but the world itself that is non-deterministic, so that no future theory
can return us to a clockwork universe."
[Conway, John Horton and Kochen, Simon. The Strong Free Will Theorem.
arXiv:0807.3286v1.]
>That interpretation was created by non-philosophers who were
>unfamiliar with Hume's analysis of causation.
Conway and Kochen are mathematicians rather than philosophers. what
turns on their degree of familiarity with Hume's analysis of causation?
>They reflected little on the often quite tricky relationship between
>language (including scientific laws, the wave function, etc.) and
>reality.
possibly true; but, supposing we take the time to adequately reflect on
this admittedly tricky relationship, what changes?
Joe
--
Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware
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http://what-am-i.net
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