scholarly journals On Explaining Everything

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Diana Taschetto
Keyword(s):  
Many Worlds ◽  
Metaphysical Grounding

This work explores foundational issues related to many-worlds theories in Cosmology. It is argued that the metaphysical picture drawn by these theories arise from metaphysical assumptions made during their formulation—most of which are problematic. I elucidate the nature of these assumptions and examine their legitimacy. I conclude the metaphysical presuppositions responsible for the apparent reliability of many-worlds theories in Cosmology are unmotivated and unwarranted by evidence. On this basis, the questions many-worlds models in Cosmology attempt to solve turn out to be a non-starter because their presupposed metaphysical grounding is ill-founded.

Galileo Unbound

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Free Fall ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Quantum Field ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Quantum Particles ◽  
Light Rays ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Insight Into

Galileo Unbound: A Path Across Life, The Universe and Everything traces the journey that brought us from Galileo’s law of free fall to today’s geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman’s dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once—setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.

Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Berryman
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Metaphysical Grounding ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
The Common

This work challenges the common belief that Aristotle’s virtue ethics is founded on an appeal to human nature, an appeal that is thought to be intended to provide both substantive ethical advice and justification for the demands of ethics. It is argued that it is not Aristotle’s intent, but the view is resisted that Aristotle was blind to questions of the source or justification of his ethical views. Aristotle’s views are interpreted as a ‘middle way’ between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists and the scepticism or subjectivist alternatives articulated by others. The commitments implicit in the nature of action figure prominently in this account: Aristotle reinterprets Socrates’ famous paradox that no one does evil willingly, taking it to mean that a commitment to pursuing the good is implicit in the very nature of action. This approach is compared to constructivism in contemporary ethics.

How Many Worlds?

Noûs ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Healey
Keyword(s):  
Many Worlds

Guillermo Cabrera Infante: Two Islands, Many Worlds

1997 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 364
Author(s):  
Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal ◽  
Raymond D. Souza
Keyword(s):  
Guillermo Cabrera Infante ◽  
Many Worlds

scholarly journals The measure problem in no-collapse (many worlds) quantum mechanics

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (03) ◽  
pp. 1730008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. H. Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Wave Function ◽  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Probability Measure ◽  
Ab Initio ◽  
Subjective Probability ◽  
State Vector ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Born Rule ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Measure Problem

We explain the measure problem (cf. origin of the Born probability rule) in no-collapse quantum mechanics. Everett defined maverick branches of the state vector as those on which the usual Born probability rule fails to hold — these branches exhibit highly improbable behaviors, including possibly the breakdown of decoherence or even the absence of an emergent semi-classical reality. Derivations of the Born rule which originate in decision theory or subjective probability (i.e. the reasoning of individual observers) do not resolve this problem, because they are circular: they assume, a priori, that the observer occupies a non-maverick branch. An ab initio probability measure is sometimes assumed to explain why we do not occupy a maverick branch. This measure is constrained by, e.g. Gleason’s theorem or envariance to be the usual Hilbert measure. However, this ab initio measure ultimately governs the allocation of a self or a consciousness to a particular branch of the wave function, and hence invokes primitives which lie beyond the Everett wave function and beyond what we usually think of as physics. The significance of this leap has been largely overlooked, but requires serious scrutiny.

How many worlds?

Nature ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 248 (5446) ◽  
pp. 299-299
Author(s):  
J. S. BELL
Keyword(s):  
Many Worlds
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