Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium #5 - Alastair Wilson (2021/12/17)
Channel: International Center for Formal Ontology
Date: 2021-12-20

Title: Fundamentality and Levels in Everettian Quantum Mechanics

Chair: Antonio Vassallo

Handout: https://ssqg.ans.pw.edu.pl/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fleqm-handout-warsaw.pdf

Abstract: Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description  are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wavefunction) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this talk I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory levels (with associated laws of nature) for EQM. This Everettian level structure encompasses and extends the ‘classical’ levels structure. The ‘classical’ levels of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are recovered, but they are emergent in character and potentially variable across Everett worlds. EQM invokes an additional fundamental level, not present in the classical levels picture, and a novel potential role for self-location in interlevel metaphysics. When given a modal realist interpretation, EQM also makes trouble for supervenience-based approaches to levels.
***
The Colloquium's goal is to provide a window into the state-of-the-art in the foundations of spacetime physics. It brings together top-level philosophers and physicists willing to share their current research with an international audience. The Colloquium is organized by the Philosophy of Physics Group at the International Center for Formal Ontology, Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences, Warsaw University of Technology.