Related papers: Moderate Physical Perspectivalism
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or…
The study of complex systems through the lens of category theory consistently proves to be a powerful approach. We propose that cognition deserves the same category-theoretic treatment. We show that by considering a highly-compact cognitive…
Is presentism compatible with relativity ? This question has been much debated since the argument first proposed by Rietdijk and Putnam. The goal of this text is to study the implications of relativity and quantum mechanics on presentism,…
The present study attempts to provide a consistent and coherent account of what the world could be like, given the conceptual framework and results of contemporary quantum theory. It is suggested that standard quantum mechanics can, and…
We consider symmetries and reduction in non-relativistic many-body quantum mechanics, with the aim of identifying physically meaningful observables in systems such as molecules and crystalline solids. To this end, we propose a unified…
I propose that qualia are physical because they are directly observable, and revisit the contentious link between consciousness and quantum measurements from a new perspective -- one that does not rely on observers or wave function collapse…
In this paper, following an elementary line of thought which somewhat differs from the usual one, we prove once more that any deterministic theory predictively equivalent to quantum mechanics unavoidably exhibits a contextual character. The…
This is an explanation and defense of "mathematical conceptualism" for a general mathematical and philosophical audience. I make a case that it is cogent, rigorous, attractive, and better suited to ordinary mathematical practice than all…
Physics faculty care about their students learning physics content. In addition, they usually hope that their students will learn some deeper lessons about thinking critically and scientifically. They hope that as a result of taking a…
Physics is considered as one of the most prevailing and problematic subjects by the students in the realm of science. Students perceived physics as a difficult subject during high school days and become more evasive when they reach college.…
In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out if two theories are "equivalent" (essentially the same) or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide means to measure distances (and explore…
This paper aims at studying the spin once again. The departure point is thus the Stern and Gerlach experimental results that can be described in a coherent way in the frame of quantum mechanics only. Instead, the relativistic mechanics…
Whoever has to learn or to teach thermodynamics is confronted with conceptual difficulties which are specific to this field of physics ([1],[2]). It seems that they can be eliminated by inserting relativity in the thermodynamic theory. The…
High energy physics features many ingenious tools for extracting finite results from formally divergent expressions. This brief note argues from a new perspective that all such formal infinities are meaningful markers of new physics. As…
The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…
A vast body of literature addresses the complex nature of science's reproducibility crisis. In contrast with this perceived complexity, some recent papers from the discipline of physics suggests that irreproducibility does not point to a…
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
Our understanding about things is conceptual. By stating that we reason about objects, it is in fact not the objects but concepts referring to them that we manipulate. Now, so long just as we acknowledge infinitely extending notions such as…
Treating reference frames fundamentally as quantum systems is inevitable in quantum gravity and also in quantum foundations once considering laboratories as physical systems. Both fields thereby face the question of how to describe physics…