Jerusalem studies in philosophy and history of science, 2020
In a series of related papers and in a book (Healey R. The quantum revolution in philosophy. Oxfo... more In a series of related papers and in a book (Healey R. The quantum revolution in philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017b), Richard Healey has proposed and articulated a new pragmatist approach to quantum theory that I will refer to as PQT. After briefly reviewing PQT by putting it into a more general philosophical context, I will discuss Healey’s self-proclaimed quantum realism by stressing that his agent-centered approach to quantum mechanics makes his position rather close to a sophisticated form of instrumentalist, despite his claims to the contrary. My discussion of the possible sources of incompatibility between PQT and the view that agents can be regarded as physical systems (agent physicalism) will allow me to compare Healey’s view of quantum theory with Pitowsky’s. In particular, by focusing on the measurement problem, I will discuss the role of observers and the notion of information in their respective philosophical approach.
... In the literature on GTR, we find two main types of substantivalism, manifold substantivalis... more ... In the literature on GTR, we find two main types of substantivalism, manifold substantivalism and metric field ... Equipped with these definitions of scientific realism and substantivalism, we are now ready to try to understand the ... In order to do so, two remarks are appropriate. ...
structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent mo... more structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent model. Were we to decide that a more complicated figure should be invoked to model it, we would have to come up with a different shape. Of course, for many of our purposes of description and explanation, treating the Earth like a sphere works quite well (say, if we want to calculate the diameter of our planet). Be that as it may, I want to conclude this short essay by pointing out that Galileo’s realism about mathematics is a reasonable position to hold. The Earth is a sphere, or exemplifies that abstract shape, independently of us human beings, independently of our concepts and of our language. Of course, we need concepts and language in order to attribute the Earth its shape, but the latter is a mathematical property of the Earth that is quite independent of any subjective epistemic instruments. We can therefore conclude that the Earth can be said to truly possess a geometrical structure. Why this is so is certainly a very difficult fact to explain, one that should make reference to the details of its formation from the Sun (rotational effects, and so on). In any case, this is a question that, in its turn, cannot be answered without bringing in more complicated mathematical structures, exactly as predicted by Galileo in 1623.
In this paper I will argue in favor of the view that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysi... more In this paper I will argue in favor of the view that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature, it needs an interpretation, namely (i) a clear formulation of its ontological/metaphysical claims and (ii) and a precise understanding of how such claims are related to the world of our experience, which is the most important reservoir of traditional, merely aprioristic metaphysical speculations. Such speculations -especially if conducted in full autonomy from physics, or imposed upon it "from the outside" -risk to turn analytic metaphysics into a "rigorous" but fully sterile intellectual game.
Jerusalem studies in philosophy and history of science, 2020
In a series of related papers and in a book (Healey R. The quantum revolution in philosophy. Oxfo... more In a series of related papers and in a book (Healey R. The quantum revolution in philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017b), Richard Healey has proposed and articulated a new pragmatist approach to quantum theory that I will refer to as PQT. After briefly reviewing PQT by putting it into a more general philosophical context, I will discuss Healey’s self-proclaimed quantum realism by stressing that his agent-centered approach to quantum mechanics makes his position rather close to a sophisticated form of instrumentalist, despite his claims to the contrary. My discussion of the possible sources of incompatibility between PQT and the view that agents can be regarded as physical systems (agent physicalism) will allow me to compare Healey’s view of quantum theory with Pitowsky’s. In particular, by focusing on the measurement problem, I will discuss the role of observers and the notion of information in their respective philosophical approach.
... In the literature on GTR, we find two main types of substantivalism, manifold substantivalis... more ... In the literature on GTR, we find two main types of substantivalism, manifold substantivalism and metric field ... Equipped with these definitions of scientific realism and substantivalism, we are now ready to try to understand the ... In order to do so, two remarks are appropriate. ...
structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent mo... more structures, even though there is a progressive more correct approximation with each subsequent model. Were we to decide that a more complicated figure should be invoked to model it, we would have to come up with a different shape. Of course, for many of our purposes of description and explanation, treating the Earth like a sphere works quite well (say, if we want to calculate the diameter of our planet). Be that as it may, I want to conclude this short essay by pointing out that Galileo’s realism about mathematics is a reasonable position to hold. The Earth is a sphere, or exemplifies that abstract shape, independently of us human beings, independently of our concepts and of our language. Of course, we need concepts and language in order to attribute the Earth its shape, but the latter is a mathematical property of the Earth that is quite independent of any subjective epistemic instruments. We can therefore conclude that the Earth can be said to truly possess a geometrical structure. Why this is so is certainly a very difficult fact to explain, one that should make reference to the details of its formation from the Sun (rotational effects, and so on). In any case, this is a question that, in its turn, cannot be answered without bringing in more complicated mathematical structures, exactly as predicted by Galileo in 1623.
In this paper I will argue in favor of the view that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysi... more In this paper I will argue in favor of the view that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature, it needs an interpretation, namely (i) a clear formulation of its ontological/metaphysical claims and (ii) and a precise understanding of how such claims are related to the world of our experience, which is the most important reservoir of traditional, merely aprioristic metaphysical speculations. Such speculations -especially if conducted in full autonomy from physics, or imposed upon it "from the outside" -risk to turn analytic metaphysics into a "rigorous" but fully sterile intellectual game.
Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest ... more Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas " Einstein 2 The " Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics " in Describing, Explaining and Predicting the Physical World 3 With a more or less implicit recall of Pythagorism, Leibniz once wrote that mathematics can be differentiated from music only because it a a form of conscious calculation, whereas music represents unconscious calculation. We can add that mathematics has a relationship to other sciences that is similar to music's relationship to other arts, as it is the most abstract but perhaps most effective instrument for understanding the world. From physics to biology, psychology to economics, there is no empirical science today which has not, in some way, been mathematized, and Immanuel Kant had already noted that Since in every theory of nature there can be only as much science, properly speaking, as there is a priori knowledge, it follows that the theory of nature can contain as much science, properly speaking, as mathematics that can be applied to it. 2 A few simple examples from the history of science will serve to illustrate the odd, and up until now, mysterious phenomenon on the basis of which entire parts of mathematics, which were initially invented and constructed without any applicative purpose, later proved to be highly useful in predicting, describing, and explaining new and unexpected natural phenomena, and therefore in bringing to light " areas of knowledge " which had been previously completely obscure. What renders the problem particularly difficult is that it does not seem easily resolvable by invoking one current philosophical position over another on the ontology of mathematics, given that prima facie, the applicability issue creates puzzles for all such positions. Within a constructivist philosophy of mathematics, for example, one must explain why mathematics – regarded as a creation of ours – 1 I would like to thank the audience at Copenhagen for the interesting questions raised during the discussion of a previous version of this chapter. 2 I. Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, Akademie Textausgabe, Bd. IV, Berlin 1968, p. 470.
Philosophical discussions of the notion of the law of nature often spring from the attempt to ide... more Philosophical discussions of the notion of the law of nature often spring from the attempt to identify a few necessary conditions that the notion must satisfy a priori: predictive power, universality, necessity, truth, or the satisfaction of counterfactual conditionals. 1 This manner of posing the question, however, leads to the development of theories of the laws of nature which physicists, biologists, or economists cannot recognize, simply because they do not reflect their practices in a sufficiently faithful manner. In critically presenting and evaluating the three most important philosophical positions on the laws of nature, regularism, necessitarism, and instrumentalist skepticism 2 , we must therefore keep a requisite in mind which we can refer to as being of ―faithfulness‖ to the practice, the contents, and to the overarching ends of science, i.e., the only requisite which should be presupposed by any epistemological analysis of the concept of law. Naturally, the decision to follow this method as the North Star of our investigation does not imply the recognition of a controversy as to what the end of scientific research is, what concrete use scientists make of the notion of law, or what a scientific theory is. Nor does it imply the adoption of a passive and conservative philosophical attitude with respect to the opinions that scientists implicitly defend on the laws of nature; as is obvious, the philosophy of science that they tacitly utilize is not at all homogeneous, unambiguous, and consistent. In selecting conceptions of the laws of nature implicit in the practice of scientists, and which better respond to a complete vision of the purposes of science and of its cognitive possibilities, we should obviously keep in mind some explicit philosophical reflections that are available today. In short, we should steer away from excessive philosophical timidity – and therefore unjustified 1 A counterfactual conditional is a conditional statement like, ―if p were true, then q would also be true,‖ in which the antecedent describes a situation that is contrary to fact. 2 In essence, as we will see in the next chapter, regularists hold that laws express regular associations of types of events holding everywhere in space-time; necessitarists hold that laws are necessary relations among properties regarded as universals, and instrumentalists hold that laws are simple instruments for prediction, devoid of any truth-value.
The concept of " law " as applied to the physical world, as much as and possibly more than others... more The concept of " law " as applied to the physical world, as much as and possibly more than others that emerged at a particular time in human intellectual history, can be fully understood only by keeping its origins in mind. Since the notion of the law of nature must also be characterized by using Giovan Battista Vico's saying − 'the nature of things is none other than their birth at certain times, and in certain ways' 2 In short, the purpose of this chapter will be to highlight two essential historical facts which in my opinion, have contributed to the establishment of the modern concept of " natural law " : the influence of technological development on our ways of representing nature, and the theological derivation of the concept of natural law. Before examining these two factors, allow me to note that I have dedicated more space to the latter than to the former: universality and necessity, which we associate with the notion of a law of nature even today, find their historical − a thorough presentation of the contemporary philosophical debate on the " nature " of laws of nature cannot exclude a reconstruction, as necessarily sketchy and incomplete as it may be, of the principal milestones which have led us to the concept of law as we understand it in its mathematical formulation. Given that this formulation was carried out through the work of Isaac Newton, the latter will also serve as the final objective of my narrative.
Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association (Proceedings of the Foundational Confere... more Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association (Proceedings of the Foundational Conference of EPSA vol. 1)
In this paper, we evaluate some proposals that can be advanced to clarify the ontological consequ... more In this paper, we evaluate some proposals that can be advanced to clarify the ontological consequences of Relational Quantum Mechanics. We first focus on priority monism and ontic structural realism and argue that these views are not suitable for providing an ontological interpretation of the theory. Then, we discuss an alternative interpretation that we regard as more promising, based on so-called 'metaphysical coherentism', which we also connect to the idea of an event-based, or 'flash', ontology.
In this paper we critically review Correia’s and Rosenkranz’s Nothing to Come. A Defence of the ... more In this paper we critically review Correia’s and Rosenkranz’s Nothing to Come. A Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time, published by Springer in 2018. By taking into account the essential reliance of the book on tense logic, we bring out the existence of a conflict between their logical axioms, that presuppose truth bivalence even for statements concerning future contingents, and the principle of groundedness that they also advocate. According to this principle, a proposition Q is now groundedly true as long as sometimes in the future it will be the case that there exists something that makes Q true. However, if the events that occur in 2060 do not exist unrestrictedly (for us, here in 2021), what, in reality, can possibly ground the truth (or falsity) of Q? In the second part of the paper, we concentrate on some conceptual difficulties raised by their brilliant attempt to adapt the growing block view of reality to a relativistic setting, based on what they call bow-tie presentism, according to which for each spacetime point s only s plus the spacelike-related region with respect to s exists. By extending temporal logic into a relativity-friendly spatiotemporal logic, we conclude by noting that Correia and Rosenkranz’s Nothing to Come makes very important strides in showing that there are technical ways to develop the growing block of reality into an ontology that coheres with relativity theories perfectly well, while retaining most of the distinctive content of classical growing block theory.
We discuss the three dominant models of the phenomenological literature pertaining to temporal co... more We discuss the three dominant models of the phenomenological literature pertaining to temporal consciousness, namely the cinematic, the retentional, and the extensional model. By relying on the distinction between acts and contents of consciousness we first discuss the explanatory merits of these three views vis à vis our temporal experience. In the second part of the paper, we review some relevant findings from the psychology and neuroscience of temporality in order to evaluate which of the three models of time consciousness is better confirmed from an empirical viewpoint. Depending on the time scale, all of the three models of temporal consciousness might be justified but we claim that the empirical evidence favours the extensional model, where the acts and contents of consciousness are both extended. The retentional model might apply to longer time intervals covered by working memory but, similarly to the cinematic model, it is open to the objection that from a neurophysiological point of view the brain processes which underlie acts of consciousness must necessarily be extended in time. We conclude by stressing a so-far neglected predictive component that is to be regarded as decisive for an understanding of our experience of temporality.
On 01/24/2021 Alice thinks of her next birthday. After approximately one rotation of the Earth, t... more On 01/24/2021 Alice thinks of her next birthday. After approximately one rotation of the Earth, the number of days that separates her experience from the anticipated event diminishes by one unit. Eventually her next birthday will become present and then it will be remembered. In the philosophy of time, there are two main explanations of this indubitable fact of our experience. One explanation, associated with some form or other of the A theory of time, amounts to the claim that time really passes: previously unreal, anticipated events continuously come into being in the present and our memories accumulate because past events mind-independently become more and more past. The other explanation, associated with the B theory of time, is that the universe is a 4-dimensional, static block in which there is no ontologically privileged present and the relation between Alice's anticipations of her birthday on 01/24/2021 and her lived experiences the year after is fixed once and for all. The passage of time is an illusion. Simon Prosser's Experiencing Time (2016) is a very brilliant defence of the B-theoretic explanation. There are two main merits of the book. The first is the richness of the philosophical arguments presented with clarity and discussed with a remarkable analytic skill. The second is Prosser's familiarity with the empirical literature stemming from psychology and the cognitive sciences, which is sometimes brought to bear in the philosophical problems in an illuminating way. After a brief introduction to the metaphysics of time in chapter 1, in chapter 2 we are presented with the main thesis of the book. While the A theorists typically invoke our "experience" in support of their dynamic metaphysics, Prosser reverses their argument: he claims that it is impossible to experience the passage of time, that expressions like "the passage of time" fail to denote and that dynamic theories of time invoking passage are unintelligible. The rest of the book is an attempt to defend the B theory by explaining away as illusory all the "experiences" that seem to militate in favour of a dynamic theory. As it will become clear in the following, I don't find explanations of our experience postulating a real passage of time unintelligible. In the first step of his explanatory project, Prosser addresses the various attitudes that we have toward the past and the future (chapter 3). He notes that our untutored beliefs about them 1 I thank Simon Prosser for his very helpful comments on an previous draft of this paper.
Review of Prosser's Experience Time, OUP 2016, 2019
On 01/24/2021 Alice thinks of her next birthday. After approximately one rotation of the Earth, t... more On 01/24/2021 Alice thinks of her next birthday. After approximately one rotation of the Earth, the number of days that separates her experience from the anticipated event diminishes by one unit. Eventually her next birthday will become present and then it will be remembered. In the philosophy of time, there are two main explanations of this indubitable fact of our experience. One explanation, associated with some form or other of the A theory of time, amounts to the claim that time really passes: previously unreal, anticipated events continuously come into being in the present and our memories accumulate because past events mind-independently become more and more past. The other explanation, associated with the B theory of time, is that the universe is a 4-dimensional, static block in which there is no ontologically privileged present and the relation between Alice's anticipations of her birthday on 01/24/2021 and her lived experiences the year after is fixed once and for all. The passage of time is an illusion. Simon Prosser's Experiencing Time (2016) is a very brilliant defence of the B-theoretic explanation. There are two main merits of the book. The first is the richness of the philosophical arguments presented with clarity and discussed with a remarkable analytic skill. The second is Prosser's familiarity with the empirical literature stemming from psychology and the cognitive sciences, which is sometimes brought to bear in the philosophical problems in an illuminating way. After a brief introduction to the metaphysics of time in chapter 1, in chapter 2 we are presented with the main thesis of the book. While the A theorists typically invoke our "experience" in support of their dynamic metaphysics, Prosser reverses their argument: he claims that it is impossible to experience the passage of time, that expressions like "the passage of time" fail to denote and that dynamic theories of time invoking passage are unintelligible. The rest of the book is an attempt to defend the B theory by explaining away as illusory all the "experiences" that seem to militate in favour of a dynamic theory. As it will become clear in the following, I don't find explanations of our experience postulating a real passage of time unintelligible. In the first step of his explanatory project, Prosser addresses the various attitudes that we have toward the past and the future (chapter 3). He notes that our untutored beliefs about them 1 I thank Simon Prosser for his very helpful comments on an previous draft of this paper.
After a brief presentation of Feynman diagrams, we criticizise the idea that Feynman diagrams can... more After a brief presentation of Feynman diagrams, we criticizise the idea that Feynman diagrams can be considered to be pictures or depictions of actual physical processes. We then show that the best interpretation of the role they play in quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics is captured by Hughes' Denotation, Deduction and Interpretation theory of models (DDI), where " models " are to be interpreted as inferential, non-representational devices constructed in given social contexts by the community of physicists.
In this paper I present and critically discuss the main strategies that Bohr used and could have ... more In this paper I present and critically discuss the main strategies that Bohr used and could have used to fend off the charge that his interpretation does not provide a clear-cut distinction between the classical and the quantum domain. In particular, in the first part of the paper I reassess the main arguments used by Bohr to advocate the indispensability of a classical framework to refer to quantum phenomena. In this respect, by using a distinction coming from an apparently unrelated philosophical corner, we could say that Bohr is not a revisionist philosopher of physics but rather a descriptivist one in the sense of Strawson. I will then go on discussing the nature of the holistic link between classical measurement apparatuses and observed system that he also advocated. The oft-repeated conclusion that Bohr’s interpretation of the quantum formalism is untenable can only be established by giving his arguments as much force as possible, which is what I will try to do in the following by remaining as faithful as possible to his published work.
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Papers by Mauro Dorato