Agreed. At present, I think of them as equally valid descriptions in different reference frames (as with Rovelli's RQM or Einstein's relativity). What...
As an example, I see two apples on the table but I don't see the number two. The apples are concrete particulars, the number two is an abstract quanti...
Alice could choose tea over coffee all her life and everyone who knows her could predict this. But I don't think this demonstrates that it wasn't real...
I agree that it doesn't need to be instantiated in some larger context (since there may be no larger context), but I would argue that it still needs t...
Yes, I was meaning the equation for a line. In this case, would the line have an infinite number of points or would it be discrete? And if both a line...
Sorry! What I was actually drawing attention to in that quote was that observer O' measures particle S with spin-down. But, earlier, observer O had me...
I haven't seen Rovelli directly discuss the issue of multiple outcomes but the Wikipedia entry on RQM does: Which is to say, multiple measured outcome...
I would just note that it is the agent herself that is the locus and determinant of her choice, not her will or desires. (As Pierre-Normand explains i...
I agree with your comments. However it wouldn't matter if the prediction did take into account that I would be informed about its content (assuming it...
It's a difference of definitions. As I use the term, free will means one can intentionally drink tea rather than coffee because that is what one wants...
MWI says that the quantum states with non-zero amplitude all occur, so that is the level that is deterministic. As I've argued, our everyday ostensive...
Collapse doesn't preserve the norm of the state vector so it's a non-unitary transformation. It reduces the superposition state to just one of the rel...
Unitary QM does. If a quantum state describes a photon being emitted towards a 50/50 beam splitter then, per the Schrodinger equation, this initial qu...
OK, but that would seem to require giving up realism. Physics World has a good analysis of the current thinking on psi-epistemic theories (quote below...
Yes. So what I'm getting at is that a notion of res potentia (i.e., a dualistic substance) does not arise in the Schrodinger equation. As far as the S...
Note that the apple also doesn't appear solid if I'm not looking at or touching it. Yet it doesn't follow that it's not solid. Properties of things ar...
I think you're getting needlessly distracted by the idea of "infinite universes". Unitary quantum mechanics postulates only one universe and it is des...
Yet despite not being actual, it has actual effects. This is why Bohmian Mechanics requires two equations. The wave equation to describe the quantum p...
Everett's theory is just unitary quantum mechanics . Everett was the first to realize that it predicted many worlds (his term was "relative states") w...
There is no wave function collapse in the Everettian Interpretation. In Bohmian Mechanics the wave function describes quantum potential at both slits ...
I would disagree. Opponents take a distinction that arises naturally in everyday experience and then their conclusion generally involves denying that ...
The "real quantum potential" just is the branching wave function, so it's just Everettian worlds by another name. The additional postulate is that the...
Fair enough, let's see what the theory of quantum mechanics says. There are two postulates that are shared by all the different interpretations. They ...
Yes, though this is a perfectly natural and ordinary distinction. For example, the straight stick appears bent when partially submerged in water. But ...
I'm curious where you find Aristotle implying this. Aristotle rejected Plato's realm of Ideal Forms and instead located form in the natural world (see...
I'm not particularly familiar with Schopenhauer's position. However I tend to identify with Aristotle's position that the intelligible world just is t...
Thanks - I'm assuming it's this paper: Consciousness as a State of Matter. Actually I'm not suggesting an axiom for "mind" as such (that's too dualist...
I think the counter-argument is that the preferred basis is the decoherence basis (by which we all observe distinctly live or dead cats). That's not t...
There needs to be a way to convert a mention to a use and using the subject-predicate form is an efficient way to do that. Yes. To say "'2+2=4' is tru...
This is the key issue. My claim is that a sentence is only capable of being true or false if it is used (i.e., expressed). Consider the sentence, "'Sn...
Ryle is arguing against cyclic expressions (fillings of their own namely-riders), but he is not arguing against mentions of the referring expression (...
The issue as I see it is not impredication, but whether the sentences in question have a truth-apt use. "This sentence is an English sentence" would o...
Here is Ryle's argument which I think explains the issue well: Thus the liar sentence is not truth-apt. It doesn't actually assert anything. The ungro...
What they both have in common is that the full sentence appears truth-apt (since it has a subject and a predicate) until, of course, the content of th...
I think Kripke grants that the liar sentence is a meaningful assertion but that it just lacks a truth value (and so therefore has some third value). W...
Yes, but it doesn't ever give you a grounded truth-apt subject. To determine the truth of the liar sentence first requires determining the truth of th...
The basic issue is that the liar sentence requires an infinite recursion to ground its referents. So it fails to state anything, not even a contradict...
It doesn't have to, the real people that are being fed the simulation will do that (assuming BIV or matrix-style simulation). They will observe their ...
The value of pi is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. That is sufficient to construct actual circles that approach the ...
Why would you suppose reality has a value for pi? There are no perfect circles in reality, just approximations of them, like the rim of my coffee cup....
The photons do have different positions in physical space at the end of the experiment (see figure 3 that shows the distinct photon pairs together eit...
Yes, I regard it as physical. The issue I'm thinking about with the HOM experiment is this. Suppose we name the two photons that are measured at the e...
OK, so granting that there are two photons throughout the experiment, are you saying that the property distinguishing the photons would not be physica...
The problem is that quantum mechanics would seem to rule this out. The reason is that if there were a differentiating property such as position while ...
Yes, the two photons are initially in different positions. But the reason they are termed "indistinguishable" or "identical" is that if they somehow e...
Yes, though that objection may not apply if the object language contains its own metalanguage as natural languages do. There presumably are implicit a...
It means that there are scenarios where you can have two (or more) particles that can't be physically distinguished, even in principle. To see this, h...
Going back to Aristotle, logic was an empirical matter. For Aristotle, particular things were considered to be an inseparable composite of matter and ...
Comments