Related papers: Humean Supervenience in the Light of Contemporary …
The pros and cons of various forms of atomism and holism that are applicable both in physical science and today's philosophy of nature are evaluated. To this end, Lewis' thesis of Humean supervenience is presented as an important case study…
An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the…
Quantum gravity's suggestion that spacetime may be emergent and so only exist contingently would force a radical reconception of extant analyses of laws of nature. Humeanism presupposes a spatiotemporal mosaic of particular matters of fact…
In recent literature, it has become clear that quantum physics does not refute Humeanism. This point has so far been made with respect to Bohms quantum theory. Against this background, this paper seeks to achieve the following four results:…
An interpretation and re-formulation of modern physics which removes the presumption of the space-time continuum, and bases physical theory on a small number of rational and empirical principles. After briefly describing the philosophical…
This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing.…
This is a companion to another paper. Together they rebut two widespread philosophical doctrines about emergence. The first, and main, doctrine is that emergence is incompatible with reduction. The second is that emergence is supervenience;…
The interaction between two parts in a compound quantum system may be reconsidered more completely than before and some new understandings and conclusions different from current quantum mechanics are obtained, including the conservation law…
This is one of two papers about emergence, reduction and supervenience. It expounds these notions and analyses the general relations between them. The companion paper analyses the situation in physics, especially limiting relations between…
We look into the ontology of quantum theory as distinct from that of the classical theory in the sciences, following a broadly Kantian tradition and distinguishing between the noumenal and phenomenal realities where the former is…
Quantum superposition states are behind many of the curious phenomena exhibited by quantum systems, including Bell non-locality, quantum interference, quantum computational speed-up, and the measurement problem. At the same time, many…
Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. I propose a unified 'Humean' solution to the two problems. Humeanism allows us…
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
Standard quantum mechanics unquestionably violates the separability principle that classical physics (be it point-like analytic, statistical, or field-theoretic) accustomed us to consider as valid. In this paper, quantum nonseparability is…
A model of reality is called separable if the state of a composite system is equal to the union of the states of its parts, located in different regions of space. Spekkens has argued that it is trivial to reproduce the predictions of…
Hamiltonian mechanics describes the evolution of a system through its Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian typically also represents the energy observable, a Noether-conserved quantity associated with the time-invariance of the law of evolution. In…
The aim of this work is to show that particle mechanics, both classical and quantum, Hamiltonian and Lagrangian, can be derived from few simple physical assumptions. Assuming deterministic and reversible time evolution will give us a…
The concept of quantum superposition is reconsidered and discussed from the viewpoint of Bohmian mechanics, the hydrodynamic formulation of quantum mechanics, in order to elucidate some physical consequences that go beyond the simple…
A consistent physical theory of quantum mechanics can be built on a complex Hamiltonian that is not Hermitian but instead satisfies the physical condition of space-time reflection symmetry (PT symmetry). Thus, there are infinitely many new…
The coherent superposition of states, in combination with the quantization of observables, represents one of the most fundamental features that mark the departure of quantum mechanics from the classical realm. Quantum coherence in many-body…