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Did the Universe Have a Cause?
Get PDFThis is a presentation of recent work on the Kalam Cosmological Argument for general, non-technical audiences. We examine whether the universe might be uncaused and we examine whether there's a good philosophical or scientific case for the universe's beginning
Did the Universe Have a Cause?
Get PDFThis is a presentation of recent work on the Kalam Cosmological Argument for general, non-technical audiences. We examine whether the universe might be uncaused and we examine whether there's a good philosophical or scientific case for the universe's beginning
On the Physical Untenability of the Standard Notion of Quantum State
Get PDFThe notion of quantum state plays a fundamental role within the Standard account of Quantum Mechanics (SQM) as established by Dirac and von Neumann during 1930s and up to the present. In this work we expose the deep inconsistencies that exist within the multiple definitions of the notion of quantum state that are provided within this axiomatic formulation. As we will argue, these different inconsistent definitions continue to be —even today— uncritically confused within the mainstream physical and philosophical literature leading to self-contradictory statements and wrong conclusions. We end with a discussion regarding the untenability of this concept for any rational understanding of theoretical physics
The Anthropocentric Bias of Anthropic Reasoning: A Case of Implicit Dualism
Get PDFMethodological anthropic reasoning (MAR), popularized by Bostrom ([2002]), aims to correct for observation selection bias by appealing to observer-relative information. I show that MAR's inferential structure is not uniquely tied to observers but applies to any set of entities subject to selection uncertainty. By miscasting a general epistemic problem as uniquely anthropic, MAR obscures its metaphysical assumptions and bypasses established probabilistic methods. Once stripped of its observer-centric framing and functionally reduced, anthropic reasoning collapses into ad hoc inference—forcing a choice: either acknowledge the metaphysical specialness of observers or concede there is no reason to privilege one physical pattern over another
How the tortoise can beat Achilles: a paradox on curves of infinite length
Get PDFAchilles and the tortoise compete in a race where the beginning (the start) is at point O and end (the finish) is at point P. At all times the tortoise can run at a speed that is a fraction F of Achilles' speed at most (with F being a positive real number lower than 1, 0 < F < 1), and both start the race at t = 0 at O. If the trajectory joining O with P is a straight line, Achilles will obviously win every time. It is easy to prove that there is a trajectory joining O and P along which the tortoise has a strategy to win every time, reaching the finish before Achilles
More Hope for Conciliationism
Get PDFThe view that epistemic peers should conciliate in cases of disagreement---the Conciliatory View---had been an important view in the early days of the peer disagreement debate. Over the years, however, the view has been the target of severe criticism; an ''obituary'' was already written for the view, and, as a recent proclamation has it, there is ''no hope'' for it. In this paper, I will argue that we should keep the hope alive by defending the Conciliatory View of peer disagreement. The primary strategy of my defense will be to separate the claims made by the view specific to peer disagreement and claims that concern higher-order evidence more generally. This separation allows us to see which problems cannot be addressed in the context of peer disagreement alone. As I will argue, the upshot of making this distinction is that although the jury is still out on whether higher-order evidence should affect our first-order doxastic states, the Conciliatory View likely follows if it does
Global Branching and Everettian Probability: A Critique of Sebens and Carroll’s Proposal
Get PDFSebens and Carroll (2018) propose that self-locating uncertainty, constrained by their Epistemic Separability Principle (ESP), derives Born rule probabilities in Everettian quantum mechanics. Their global branching model, however, leads to local amplitudes lost, undermining this derivation. This paper argues that global branching’s premature splitting of observers, such as Bob in an EPR-Bohm setup, yields local pure states devoid of amplitude coefficients essential for Born rule probabilities. Despite their innovative framework, further issues with global branching—conflicts with decoherence, relativistic violations via physical state changes, and constraints on superposition measurements—render it empirically inadequate. Defenses, such as invoking global amplitudes, fail to resolve these flaws. Additionally, observer-centric proofs of the Born rule neglect objective statistics, weakening their empirical grounding. This analysis underscores the need to reconsider branching mechanisms to secure a robust foundation for Everettian probabilities
An intermediate approach to value management
Get PDFThe epistemic projection approach (EPA) is an intermediate approach to value management in science. It recognizes that there are sometimes good reasons to make research responsive to contextual values, but it achieves this responsiveness via the careful formulation of a research problem in the problem-selection stage of investigation. EPA is thus an approach that could be acceptable to some parties on both sides of the debate over the value-free ideal. Independent of this, EPA provides practitioners with concrete guidance on how to make research responsive to contextual values. This is illustrated with an example involving air pollution
Quantum Measurement Without Collapse or Many Worlds: The Branched Hilbert Subspace Interpretation
Get PDFWe propose the Branched Hilbert Subspace Interpretation (BHSI) as an alternative perspective on quantum measurement. BHSI describes measurement as a unitary branching of the local Hilbert space into decoherent, independent, and unitarily evolving subspaces, while updating observer states (through their equipment) by causally engaging and disengaging operators. Unlike the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI), BHSI avoids wave function collapse while maintaining the Born rule through the branch weights associated with the initial system state. Unlike the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), BHSI sidesteps parallel worlds by entangling branches with the local environment within a single world. We compare BHSI’s features with those of CI, MWI, and Bohmian Mechanics (BM). We investigate its implications for the double-slit experiment, Bell tests, Wigner's friend, black hole radiation, and the delayed-choice quantum eraser. We examine quantum teleportation, demonstrating that locally controlled decoherence and recoherence processes (CDRP) can be observed. Specifically, we suggest experiments using modern Stern-Gerlach interferometers (SGI) to visualize the CDRP, measure branch weights that encode the Born rule, and predict the electromagnetic (EM) phase shift resulting from the independent unitary evolution of decoherent branches. BHSI thus provides a minimalist alternative to interpretations based on collapse or many-worlds
What is the value in an intrinsic formalism?
Get PDFI discuss the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic approaches to reformulating a theory with symmetries, and offer an account of the special value of intrinsic formalisms, drawing on a distinction between which mathematical expressions are meaningful within an extrinsic formalism and which are not