Callender, Craig (2018) Can We Quarantine the Quantum Blight? [Preprint]

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Abstract

In the science fiction novel Quarantine, Greg Egan imagines a universe where interactions with human observers collapse quantum wavefunctions. Aliens, unable to collapse wavefunctions, tire of being slaughtered by these collapses. In response they erect an impenetrable shield around the solar system, protecting the rest of the universe from human interference and locking humanity into a starless Bubble. When confronting scientific realism and the quantum, many philosophers try to do the theoretical counterpart of this fictional practical strategy. Quantum mechanics is beset with many hard-to-resolve interpretational challenges. Philosophers — appealing to decoherence and coarse-graining — try to put these in a bubble and hope that they can go about their philosophizing as before. My chapter aims to burst this Bubble.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Callender, Craig ccallender@ucsd.edu
Keywords:	quantum mechanics, scientific realism, Bohmian mechanics, Everett, wavefunction, underdetermination
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Theory/Observation
Depositing User:	Craig Callender
Date Deposited:	13 Dec 2018 20:49
Last Modified:	13 Dec 2018 20:49
Item ID:	15450
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Theory/Observation
Date:	13 December 2018
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/15450

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