Meeting 2: Rawad El Skaf and Quentin Ruyant on Thought Experiments and Quantum Modelling
Channel: CEFISES at UCLouvain
Date: 2021-05-14

Recorded online, April 28, 2021. Abstracts of the two talks:

Rawad El Skaf - Probing theoretical statements with thought experiments

In this paper I analyse a large class of thought experiments (TEs) in physics along the three interrelated dimensions: their form, content and epistemic function.

To delimit the epistemic function first, I note that in many TEs scientists aim at inquiring about or probing theoretical statements and at drawing consequences. One crucial strategy for doing this, or so I will argue, is the following. A TE reveals an inconsistency in part of our previously held, sometimes empirically well-established, theoretical statements (inquire part). A TEer or her critic then proposes a resolution in the form of a conjecture, a hypothesis that merit further investigation (draw consequences part).

This characterisation of the epistemic function in turn requires a clarification of the nature of the inconsistencies revealed by TEs (from which I will analyse the content dimension), as well as of the way in which TEs reveal and resolve them (from which I will analyse the form dimension). In doing this, my analysis will however not build on the nature of the cognitive processes involved in performing a TE, be they propositional or non-propositional. This is the case both in the performance of a TE and in its assessment. The upshot is that TEs’ reliability, like real experiments, is to be found, in part, in their replicability by the epistemic community, not in their cognitive underpinnings.

Quentin Ruyant - On the relationship between modelling practices and interpretive stances in quantum mechanics

The purpose of this paper is to establish a connection between modelling practices and interpretive approaches in quantum mechanics, taking as a starting point the literature on scientific representation.

Different types of modalities (epistemic, practical, conceptual and natural) play different roles in scientific representation. I postulate that the way theoretical structures are interpreted in this respect affects the way models are constructed. In quantum mechanics, this would be the case in particular of initial conditions and observables. I examine two formulations of quantum mechanics, the standard wave-function formulation and the consistent histories formulation, and show that they correspond to opposite interpretive stances, which confirms my approach. Finally, I examine possible strategies for deciding between these stances.