Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
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Tomasz Bigaj,
Abstract
This paper addresses the issue of the applicability of David Lewis's possible world semantics of counterfactual conditionals to the explication of some quantum-mechanical phenomena. Three main reasons why counterfactual semantics may be useful for this task are given. It is further argued that two possible semantic approaches to counterfactuals should be taken into account involving spatiotemporal events that satisfy requirements of special relativity. The main problem considered in the article is how to expand both approaches into full semantic systems. The first of the approaches is known to be amenable to a generalization within the Lewis-style semantics. The second one, however, poses a greater challenge, as it has been proven (Bigaj 2004) that it cannot be incorporated into a similarity-based counterfactual semantics. In this article, an alternative method of generalization for the second counterfactual semantics is developed, which goes beyond Lewis's framework based on the rigid similarity relation between possible worlds. The proposed method of evaluating counterfactuals is then put to the test using an example from the quantum theory. As a result of this test, a small correction of the method turns out to be necessary.
© 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
Articles in the same Issue
- Prelims
- Semiotics and logic: Pragmatization of the common ground
- Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science
- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
