36 research outputs found
Why should philosophers of science pay attention to the commercialization of academic science?
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When can statistical theories be causally closed?
Get PDFThe notion of common cause closedness of a classical, Kolmogorovian probability space with respect to a causal independence relation between the random events is defined, and propositions are presented that characterize common cause closedness for specific probability spaces. It is proved in particular that no probability space with a finite number of random events can contain common causes of all the correlations it predicts; however, it is demonstrated that probability spaces even with a finite number of random events can be common cause closed with respect to a causal independence relation that is stronger than logical independence. Furthermore it is shown that infinite, atomless probability spaces are always common cause closed in the strongest possible sense. Open problems concerning common cause closedness are formulated and the results are interpreted from the perspective of Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle
Reichenbachian Common Cause Systems
Get PDFA partition of a Boolean algebra \cS in a probability measure space (\cS,p) is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlated pair of events in \cS if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement, the cardinality of the index set is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any correlation in (\cS,p), and given any finite size , the probability space (\cS,p) can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size for the correlation. It also is shown that every totally ordered subset in the partially ordered set of all partitions of \cS$ contains only one Reichenbachian common cause system. Some open problems concerning Reichenbachian common cause systems are formulated
Do the Causal Principles of Modern Physics Contradict Causal Anti-Fundamentalism?
Get PDFIn Norton(2003), it was urged that the world does not conform at a fundamental level to some robust principle of causality. To defend this view, I now argue that the causal notions and principles of modern physics do not express some universal causal principle, brought to light by discoveries in physics. Rather they merely assert that, according to relativity theory, spacetime has an invariant velocity, that of light; and that theories of matter admit no propagations faster than light
Local primitive causality and the common cause principle in quantum field theory
No full textIf is a net of local von Neumann algebras satisfying standard axioms of algebraic relativistic quantum field theory and and are spacelike separated spacetime regions, then the system is said to satisfy the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle iff for every pair of projections , correlated in the normal state there exists a projection belonging to a von Neumann algebra associated with a spacetime region contained in the union of the backward light cones of and and disjoint from both and , a projection having the properties of a Reichenbachian common cause of the correlation between and . It is shown that if the net has the local primitive causality property then every local system with a locally normal and locally faithful state and open bounded and satisfies the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle
Probability and Typicality in Deterministic Physics
Get PDFRecently it has been argued that typicality considerations play a crucial explanatory role in deterministic theories in physics (e.g. classical statistical mechanics and Bohmian mechanics). In this approach a sharp distinction is made between typicality and probability. We analyze in this paper the relation between the notion of typicality and probability, the question of the choice of measure in deterministic theories in physics, and the way in which probability and typicality arise and should be understood in such theories. We argue that in deterministic theories it is the notion of probability rather than typicality that may (sometimes) have explanatory value
