Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 2: Philosophie der Physik II

AGPhil 2.2: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 15. März 2018, 10:30–11:00, H 2033

Emergence, Experience and Quantum Physics - A New View — •Ravi Gomatam — Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology, Mumbai, India

How do simple parts (such as a plank and four sticks) bring about a whole (say, a 'table', in this case)? We deem the simples as real via a direct realism concerning objects in commonsense thinking. The same direct realism could not also serve to treat the wholes as real, if emergent systems are different from their constituent parts, as is commonly held. This may well be the nub of the issue in concerning emergence: we need an alternative version of direct realism.

This same need also arises in quantum mechanics, wherein the "cat paradox" shows that our usual direct realism about macroscopic objects is good enough only to get the irreducibly probabilistic interpretation, not to get at the quantum ontology underlying single events. I will motivate a new version of direct realism about experiences that leads to a new quantum notion of emergence of macroscopic objects at the level of experiences, which is what the wholes are. Unlike the microscopic holism exhibited by entangled EPR-pairs of microscopic particles, well-discussed in the literature, this new view of macroscopic quantum holism is more intuitive, sans new paradoxes and is congenial to naturalize emergence.