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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the spooky-action-at-a-distance dept.

Spacetime events and objects aren't all that exists, a new quantum interpretation suggests.

[...] In the new paper, three scientists argue that including "potential things on the list of "real" things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. It is perhaps less of a full-blown interpretation than a new philosophical framework for contemplating those quantum mysteries. At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of "reality" is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum's mysteries disappear. In particular, "real" should not be restricted to "actual" objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or "potential" realities, that have not yet become "actual." These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are "ontological" — that is, real components of existence.

"This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of 'what is real' to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility," write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.

[...] In their paper, titled "Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously," Kastner and colleagues elaborate on this idea, drawing a parallel to the philosophy of René Descartes. Descartes, in the 17th century, proposed a strict division between material and mental "substance." Material stuff (res extensa, or extended things) existed entirely independently of mental reality (res cogitans, things that think) except in the brain's pineal gland. There res cogitans could influence the body. Modern science has, of course, rejected res cogitans: The material world is all that reality requires. Mental activity is the outcome of material processes, such as electrical impulses and biochemical interactions.

Kastner and colleagues also reject Descartes' res cogitans. But they think reality should not be restricted to res extensa; rather it should be complemented by "res potentia" — in particular, quantum res potentia, not just any old list of possibilities. Quantum potentia can be quantitatively defined; a quantum measurement will, with certainty, always produce one of the possibilities it describes. In the large-scale world, all sorts of possibilities can be imagined (Browns win Super Bowl, Indians win 22 straight games) which may or may not ever come to pass.

This could be an amazing breakthrough - and it would also reconcile Einstein's 'Left Shoe' construction.
Somehow, reading this paper also made me think of software design!

Read the article at sciencenews.org
Read the paper at arxiv.org


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @10:33AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @10:33AM (#576961)

    I think you'd rather have to brush up your philosophy. I certainly know a lot about quantum mechanics, but I can only guess at what this is intended to mean. Basically it sounds to me that they just want to redefine the term "real" to include events that didn't yet happen, but might happen in the future. With that redefinition the contradiction between the positions "the wave function is real" and "the wave function is just a catalogue of potential measurement results" vanishes.

    However I suspect it's just an apparent resolution, because redefining words doesn't resolve the underlying problem. Those who claim the wave function is real very definitely use the old meaning of "real", and reinterpreting them with the new meaning of "real" just changes the claim.

    But maybe there's a philosopher here who can prove me wrong.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:53PM (#577175) Journal

    Aristotelians! Aristotle, Metaphysics [tufts.edu]

    ἐπεὶ δὲ λέγεταi τὸ ὂν τὸ μὲν τὸ τὶ ἢ ποiὸν ἢ ποσόν, τὸ δὲ κατὰ δύναμiν καὶ ἐντελέχεiαν καὶ κατὰ τὸ ἔργον, δiορίσωμεν καὶ περὶ δυνάμεως [35] καὶ ἐντελεχείας, καὶ πρῶτον περὶ δυνάμεως ἣ λέγεταi μὲν μάλiστα κυρίως, οὐ μὴν χρησiμωτάτη γέ ἐστi πρὸς ὃ βουλόμεθα νῦν:

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:40AM (1 child)

      by acid andy (1683) on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:40AM (#577391) Homepage Journal

      According to Google:

      and the other categories of the same are referred to, according to the essence (according to the very meaning of the word, is the name of the tribe, the number and the names and the names of the two): always come the word of the word, which is in these first sayings): For it is said that they are the ones whose strength is, by force and force, and according to the ordinance, appoint a force of [35] and of force, and first the force is called ἣ is mainly my name used for the first time we are:

      Methinks something's been lost in translation! : (

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:22PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:22PM (#577695) Journal

        Follow the link provided, click on the word "focus" next to where it says "English". If you can use Google, you can use Perseus.

  • (Score: 1) by rylyeh on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:19PM (1 child)

    by rylyeh (6726) <{kadath} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:19PM (#577191)
    I thought this bit about LME might also inform as to how we use Boolean logic in tech.

    Moreover, we will see (in more detail below) that quantum potentiae (QP, represented by the usual quantum state or ray in Hilbert Space), like res potentiae in general, satisfy neither the Principle of Non-contradiction (PNC), nor the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM), both formerly considered as ‘self-evident’ first principles of logic. Together, PNC and LEM constitute a principle of exclusive disjunction of contradictories, wherein a proposition P is necessarily either true or false, with no ‘middle’ alternative. Russell presented LEM this way: “Everything must either be or not be” (Russell, 1912, 113). When interpreted classically, Russell’s formulation implicitly only acknowledges one mode of ‘being’—that which is actual. Thus, a tacit classical assumption behind LEM is that of actualism: the doctrine that only actual things exist. However, as will be demonstrated presently, in the context of quantum mechanics, PNC and LEM together evince the ontological significance of both actuality and potentiality, given that every quantum measurement entails the former’s evolution from the latter by way of probabilities, which also satisfy both PNC and LEM.

    --
    "a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:05AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:05AM (#577353) Journal

      Note that this also works if you don't give the wave function ontological status, but consider it just a description of knowledge. If we know that the light is either on or of, it doesn't follow that we either know that the light is on, or know that the light is off. This holds without any speculation about potentialities (it works both when the light does have a definite state — which we might not know — and when it doesn't — in which case we of course cannot know it).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.