Effects and Propositions

The quantum logical and quantum information-theoretic traditions have exerted an especially powerful influence on Bub's thinking about the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. This paper discusses both the quantum logical and information-theoretic traditions from the point of view of their representational frameworks. I argue that it is at this level, at the level of its framework, that the quantum logical tradition has retained its centrality to Bub's thought. It is further argued that there is implicit in the quantum information-theoretic tradition a set of ideas that mark a genuinely new alternative to the framework of quantum logic. These ideas are of considerable interest for the philosophy of quantum mechanics, a claim which I defend with an extended discussion of their application to our understanding of the philosophical significance of the no hidden variable theorem of Kochen and Specker.Comment: Presented to the 2007 conference, New Directions in the Foundations of Physic

Reconsidering the Carnap-Kuhn Connection

Recently, some philosophers of science (e.g., Gürol Irzik, Michael Friedman) have challenged the ‘received view’ on the relationship between Rudolf Carnap and Thomas Kuhn, suggesting that there is a close affinity (rather than opposition) between their philosophical views. In support of this argument, these authors cite Carnap and Kuhn’s similar views on incommensurability, theory-choice, and scientific revolutions. Against this revisionist view, I argue that the philosophical relationship between Carnap and Kuhn should be regarded as opposed rather than complementary. In particular, I argue that a consideration of the fundamentally disparate nature of the broader philosophical projects of Carnap (logic of science) and Kuhn (providing a theory of scientific revolutions)renders the alleged similarities between their views superficial in comparison to their fundamental differences. In defense of the received view, I suggest that Carnap and Kuhn are model representatives of two contrasting styles of doing philosophy of science, viz., logical analysis and historical analysis respectively. This analysis clarifies the role played by Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the demise of logical empiricism in the second half of the twentieth-century

How to combine and not to combine physics and metaphysics

In this paper I will argue that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature it needs an “interpretation”. As I understand it, an interpretation of a physical theory amounts to offering (1) a precise formulation of its ontological claims and (2) a clear account of how such claims are related to the world of our experience. Notably, metaphysics enters importantly in both tasks: in (1), because interpreting our best physical theories requires going beyond a merely instrumentalist view of science and therefore using our best metaphysical theories; in (2), because a philosophical elaboration of the theories of the world that are implicit in our experience is one of the tasks of analytic metaphysics, and bridging possible explanatory gaps or even conflicts between the physical image and the manifest image of the world is a typical philosophical task that involves science and metaphysic

The Forgotten Tradition. How the Logical Empiricists missed the Philosophical Significance of the work of Riemann, Christoffel and Ricci

Abstract. The paper attempts to show how the Logical Empiricists’ interpretation of the relation between geometry and reality emerges from a “collision” of mathematical traditions. Considering Riemann’s work as the initiator of a 19th century geometrical tradition, whose main protagonists were Helmholtz and Poincaré, the Logical Empiricists neglected the fact that Riemann’s revolutionary insight flourished rather in a non-geometrical tradition dominated by the works of Christoffel and Ricci-Curbastro roughly in the same years. I will argue that in the attempt to draw the line Riemann-Helmholtz-Poincaré-Einstein Logical Empiricists were led to argue that General Relativity raised mainly a problem of mathematical under-determination, i.e. the discovery that there are physical differences that cannot be expressed in the relevant mathematical structure of the theory. However, a historical reconstruction of the alternative line of development Riemann-Chritoffel-Ricci-Einstein shows on the contrary that the main philosophical issue raised by Einstein’s theory was rather that of mathematical over-determination, i.e. the recognition of the presence of redundant mathematical differences that do not have any correspondence in physical reality