Tuesday, 14 March 2006
Finding Ordinary Objects
in the World of Quantum Mechanics
Cian Dorr, University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Philosophy
12:05 pm, 817R
Cathedral of Learning
Abstract:
It is widely held that a world exhaustively characterized
by a quantum-mechanical wavefunction evolving in accordance with
Schrödinger's equation could not contain ordinary objects—chairs,
people, measurement apparatuses—like the ones we take ourselves
to be familiar with. This opinion seems to be based on the
assumption that ordinary objects, if they exist at such a world,
must be aggregates of particles, or at least behave like them in
certain respects. But this assumption is unfounded: a proper
understanding of the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics suggests
many other possible candidates for identification with the ordinary
objects of our acquaintance. In fact, I claim, a world of
that sort would contain an immense multiplicity of ordinary objects,
some of which could very well be people with evidence like ours.
So far I am in agreement with some followers of Everett: but the view I develop is also heavily
indebted to Bohm. I argue that each ordinary object is associated
with just one of the trajectories through configuration space which,
for Bohmians, represent the different physically possible situations
consistent with all the facts about the wavefunction. This
leads to an account of measurement that is just like Bohm's, except
that our knowledge and ignorance of the "hidden" variables is knowledge
and ignorance of our location in the world, rather than of what
the world is like.
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the last donut? |