Emergence of Localised Particles in LET

0:00 I think most people do that. So that Jeeva knows we're being recorded for David Wright I didn't remember I'd like to remember the name For someone Someone who's not in attendance wants to listen to what we have to say So, guard your words. I'm not saying it needs to be there. All right. Have you had a chance to read it? No, I've had a chance to read it. Well, I should copy this, unfortunately, but if you want to look on. That's the Root article, anyway. The first paragraph, one page. Oh, yes. The famous Evans, and then repeated by Solomon as well, in one of his books against the possibility of vague objects right so they had the discussion today on vague objects and specifically on Lewis arguments that quantum objects can be vague objects because traditionally I guess vague objects were always things about like the desert and whether the desert was a vague object because it had no clear boundary about where the desert ended or whether this was just our due to our language and description and also concerning personal identity like the example they mention is what the what's it called, the Brown-Brownson example that comes from Shoemaker, so that someone's brain is taken out of one body and put in another and is it vague whether the personal identity of the person whether the personal identity itself or the person itself is vague or whether a reference of the person is vague and I don't know what Lowe's opinion of these traditional examples are, but he still thinks that objects can be vague, but he cites quantum examples, a-quantum examples specifically. By the way, I have a procedural question. Do you normally have it as a discussion only or do you also, I mean, are there sometimes seminars? There are sometimes seminars when the presentation, like next week, he's going to talk.

2:30 And should there be always some reading material that should be... No, not necessarily, not for a talk. If there's no talk in it, we're just discussing an article, then we just read the article and discuss it. If it's a talk, then if you want, and you're always welcome to suggest reading, that would be helpful for the talk. For the talk, yeah. But usually then it's not really quiet. So, yeah, this is just discussing a series of analysis articles concerning vague objects and quantum mechanics. So did, well, I know you haven't looked at it. You've read through it. I've read. Did you? I've had a look at it. Have you looked at it on Amazon? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought there would be something like a seminar somebody might actually put in the article, see, and also I didn't have time with that. Alright. Well, the main argument against vague objects given by Evans is that it's pretty clear, I think, how it works, isn't it? Yeah. The idea is that self-identity is a property possessed by, determinedly possessed by the object so that an identity statement can't be vague because if it's vague, whether it has self-identity then there's something different. So as it goes, right? I mean, we can all read it here. But sometimes you know, I mean, it's difficult to specify the identity of the object because, like in the case of the wave-particle duality, what is an electron? Is there a wave or a particle? Yeah, well, the thing is, is that, I mean, we will get into all this as well, but the idea is that the identity statement itself, the vagueness, the indeterminacy of its truth value isn't due to the indeterminate reference of the singular terms on both sides it's due to the fact that the objects themselves that these terms were determinately referred to are vague in some way, so it's not supposed to be based upon the language as it is as it is I know everyone does look themselves up against

5:00 Yeah, everyone uses this. Well, this is sort of the standard argument against big objects, I suppose. I wonder if you could make it either shorter or really longer. Well, as we see what later on, Noonan says that you don't have to use the property of self-identity. you can use other properties that one determinately possesses and since the other doesn't determinately possess it it's clear that the two cannot be identical by Leibniz's law or an even weaker principle, the diversity of affinity, definitely dissimilar, which I had never actually heard of until I read Newton's article but we'll just stick with Leibniz's law I suppose, because I don't know I don't think Leibniz's law is really that controversial unless there are fake objects, of course. Well, let's go on to the lowest first example, I suppose. Probably the best. Yeah. And then he, I mean, so the example itself is basically, you have some atom, it absorbs an electron, becomes an ion, and then emits an electron later. And the question is, is whether the electron absorbed admitted. And the interesting thing is that Lowe strongly believes in cross-temple identity for quantum objects, which I think is a very controversial claim. And the reason, I mean, of course he's sticking strictly in the quantum mechanical examples. He's not considering quantum field here, so we don't have to actually talk about it. Does he actually say that in some way? He does believe it. He actually explicitly says. Yeah, I mean, it's the third paragraph, first sentence. I should remark that it would be wrong to assume that quantum theory poses problems for synchronic individuation and dichronic identity, which is cross-tempo identity, of electrons quite generally, and hence cast doubt upon the legitimacy of our description of the preceding examples in terms of identifiable electron A existing prior to the interaction and identifiable electron D existing subsequent. so he quite he believes in it and the reason I think he does of course he sticks mostly with the fermions

7:30 he ignores the boson case is because he thinks that if an electron isn't entangled in some way or doesn't exist in a many body wave function then it's clear it has cross temporal identity and so then why would it lose it once it becomes entangled What do you mean by cross-temple identity? Cross-temple identity so that the object endures, so that there's some sense in saying that the electron at time one is the same electron at time two. I mean, there's several ways to analyze cross-temple identity. You can use the temporal parts theory, which I don't think Lowe is a fan of, but he never really talks much about it, or you can use the idea of enduring objects or persisting objects. That is, the electron doesn't exist as a combination of parts, it's just a thing that endures through time. Or persists through time. I thought he was playing a bit of a shaky game. There's an answer between saying, well, all I'm trying to do is show that we can conceive of indeterminate statements. or vague states around the world, and saying, and that's the way it actually is. I thought there was one bit where he seemed to try to side-seller it at, well, you know, so what if I haven't got quantum mechanics right, or something like that, I'm just trying to, you know, so what if it turns out that there aren't particles whatsoever, in other words, he was addressing himself as quantum field theory, even if you can't become the particles of quantum field theory, I don't care, I'm just trying to show it's conceivable. but that that's true I don't know if that's I don't know if the conceivability tells you very much because you can in any case people have already conceived of objections to this that aren't quantum mechanical and that's the distinctive aspect of this article so I think he's not really allowed to make that size of them he'd really have to say well I thought and say, well, this is the only interpretation we can have of the phenomena, we've got to revise what seemed to be, you know, because Evans' design was just extremely plausible, it's hard to see where you block it, this is what we've got to block it somewhere, because the way the world is, you know, we'll revise our, what seems aproposible in the face of experience, but it really has to show that that is the only interpretation we can give to.

10:00 Well, it doesn't even, because, you know, Evans is trying to make a claim about necessity here, that it's definitely impossible for identity statements with clear reference to be indeterminate in truth value. And so, I mean, since it's a question of necessity, all you have to do is come up with a plausible counter-example. and you've sort of found out that his argument isn't it has gone wrong in some way I mean I understand that way I don't think you need a conceivable count example because you can also say well I can just imagine a situation in which Leibniz is well, you know I deposit his model for something who Leibniz is well doesn't hold Can you imagine that situation? I don't know if I can but I think it's the problem about conceivability that he'd always say, well, I can conceive of it. It's not a, it's not a, you know, I think it's not a particularly good move. I think it's something stronger than just saying, I mean, I don't think it's something stronger than just, well, we can, you know, find a form of words. There's a sensible counter of this. When he's saying, conceivability's got some more flesh than that. I shouldn't have seen your point I mean, there are multiple ways of blocking this I was unhappy not to be reading the Lewis article that Noonan refers to which seems to be Noonan's presentation of that makes at least a fair bit of sense that there simply isn't an object A and an object B that that blocks it that are determinate well Lou goes through several ways in which you can counter he actually doesn't mention that particular option which one's this, that there's no self identity? no, the option that Lewis identified which is? that Noonan talks about

12:30 I thought the article or the objection Noonan cites as valid isn't that the one that Lowe brings up at the end oh is it the one where the idea which okay so we're on the new name so they pretty simply aren't precise designators A and B does he mention them at the end of the graph I have read this last Well, what's the objection Noonan cites, I think, is the one that, look, if you're going to take the determinant property that one of them possesses that the other doesn't, which demonstrates that the two are distinct, it can't be an identity-related problem because that sort of begs the question. And it's one that they both sort of possess. That you don't know what they possess by parity. So the way, I think Noonan actually describes, I mean, Lowe mentions it at the end of his article where he says, however, I realize many logicians, this is on 113, have an alternative diagnosis of the error of Evans' proof. Suppose we concede that electron B does possess the supposed property that it is indeterminate that X equals A, as stated in line 2 of Evans' proof. then observe that the parity of reasoning must lead us to say equally that electron A possesses a symmetrical property, you know, is indetermined at X equals B. However, given the quantum physical assumptions of no objective fact of the matter as to whether or not electron A is identical with electron B, it surely follows that the property indeterminate X equals A possessed by electron B is not determinately distinct from the symmetrical property indeterminate X equals B possessed by electron A, for the two properties differ only by a permutation of A and B. So the point is that these aren't valid properties that you can distinguish because the idea of distinguishing between A and B is what's being questioned. Right. So Newton's just putting the same point. Yeah, and Newton sort of agrees that this is a valid criticism that it doesn't make sense to use this property X equals A

15:00 simply because you can't distinguish between the two properties until you distinguish between the two objects Well, you can't distinguish between the two properties to decide your question about whether you can distinguish between the two objects that are needed to distinguish between the two properties. So it does clearly beg the question, I think. But then Noonan goes on to say there are other non-identity relating properties that you can use to distinguish. At least one of which must be indeterminate. indeterminate which is determinate for one of the electrons and indeterminate for the other so the property that I don't think Noonan says it but Lowe in going back to Noonan because Lowe goes back to Noonan he says like so sure we can't use the property indeterminate x equals a or determinant a equals a because these involve identity indeterminate whether the a and b actually identical by our supposition. But you can do something like if we're sticking with Lowe's example of the absorption and admission that if A is the one absorbed and B is the one emitted, the fact that A is absorbed is a property of A a definitive property of A because that's what A is, it's the one absorbed. B doesn't possess that definitive property because it can determine whether B because it's indeterminate whether A equals B. So by Leibniz's law, A cannot equal B because they possess a property that one possesses and the other doesn't. And it's a property that we can clearly distinguish independently of the identity statement, decision of the identity statement A equals B. I don't quite understand how you establish the energy of the electron because you see the wave function of the electrons are these anti-symmetrize so so the electrons in my body and the electrons say in that table they form this wave function they have a wave function with anti-symmetrize so you can't say that a particular electron is in my body and not in that table yeah there are a lot of where they're in the same state yeah it's just anti-symmetrize So what determines my identity as opposed to the table are the wave functions, the quantum

17:30 states that constitute my body, not the electrons. I cannot say that the electron is, the particle electron is in my body and not in the table. So if you think of me as being made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and the other elementary particles, then I cannot be distinguished from that table. Well, see, this is sort of, I think, Lowe's point, is that there is this indeterminacy concerning electrons in many-body, or any particles in many-body wave functions, yet he still also wants to maintain a very classical ontology of persisting electrons. Yeah, but that's what I don't understand. I mean, you know, you have electrons being created and annihilated is the... Yeah, well, that's true. It doesn't really go into any of this quantum field stuff. He takes the fact that electrons are fermions to be sufficient to allow him to say there's an electron in my body, I have an electron at the table, and that they are distinguishable, but in fact, the quantum mechanics doesn't justify that. I agree. It doesn't justify that at all. So in fact, his first step is just an incorrect understanding. I agree. sort of naive example of how quantum mechanics actually works, and the idea that if you're really going to consider the many-body equation and the meaning of the exclusion principle, you can't use it in the way he does, because it's not the idea that they can't be in the same state, because obviously there's not single-particle states, there's the many-particle say, and you can't interpret it like that. Lowe really does use a very naive problem and maybe we should criticize him for it. French and Redhead bring up this very idea in their article when they're talking about Bose-Einstein versus Fermion's statistics and the fact is that most people take the idea of being, you know, the idea of statistics and explaining how quantum statistics is different by saying, right, you have single particle wave function state, we have two electrons, A and B, just two states, right,

20:00 so position is going to be first electron, so he's saying, well, you know, Some people say there are four possible states, or excuse me, A, yeah, A, A, B, B, A, and B, B, right? And some people say, well, you know, there are four classical states, but you have to count these as the same, and that's why you get things different in this permutation symmetry, statistics. Now, of course, French and Redhead say, no, this isn't true. None of these, except especially for fermions. Well, these two states are actually physical for bosons, but none of them are actually physical for fermions. And that the actual states you have to consider are the full symmetrized ones, right? Which we all know. Everyone knows the symmetrized ones, right? And that's, you're going to have one state for, and when you have the symmetrized ones, the actual states, and you use these as your states that you do your statistics Yeah, it's just one, and then you have three for the bosons, and that explains the difference in bosons and fermions and how the permutation to symmetry takes into place, and that you can't consider it like this, and specifically they say that the equivalence of these two is used in very early interpretations of quantum mechanics to explain why electrons and bosons can't be individuals. But since you have to actually go to the full state, that argument's no longer open, because you have to explain, because there's other explanations of the full many-body equation than just them losing their individuality. The article's actually pretty interesting and good. It's cited in one of these papers. Oh, the redhead and French. French redhead article. Yes, it is. It might be the French and Krauss, actually, that refers to it. Yeah, French always refers to its own stuff. But see, in quantum field theory, it's the field which forms the ontology, you see, the particle excitations of the field. There's several experiments that you can give to support the statement. Okay, so, yes, regarding the cross-temporal identity, what really assists in time is really the concert quantities, like charge, energy.

22:30 Particle number? Yeah, well, not particle number, because you can have particles being created and annihilated. But there are conserved quantities that are determined by the standard model. Well, I mean, there's true, there's added troubles that come in once you actually go to a quantum field theory. And these people are only considering, and most of the literature only considers, you know, the particle aspects of quantum mechanics. Non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Non-relativistic quantum mechanics. but the idea is that even in non-relativistic quantum mechanics where you have something very similar to particles if you have to get rid of your entire classical logic you have to jettison this because it's not consistent with something that's the most similar to particles in the classical world possible it's philosophically interesting so they want to take the simple example and the fact of the matter is a lot of these philosophers don't understand Mark Fooke But what is their objective, if they want to understand physics at a deeper level, then they... Well, I think the idea is, especially with Lowe here, is if you can show just using quantum mechanics that there are vague objects, or at least vague objects are possible, that the situation is not going to become extraordinarily different when you go to quantum field theory. that is if vague objects are the existing quantum mechanics then something similar is going to exist in quantum field theory. That's not necessarily true. That's not necessarily true, but you'd have good indication. Certainly it's not going to revert back to the classical case. So the objective is to show that there are no objects in quantum field? Lowe's thing is to show that quantum mechanics... Well, see, again, it's the idea of Lowe's only trying to make a plausibility argument. That he's trying to show that quantum mechanics gives us an example of how objects can be vague. The objects themselves, not the language we use about the objects. Can be vague. Can be vague. And to a certain extent, it doesn't matter if quantum mechanics is the right theory, as long as it's a plausible, consistent, understandable theory. Because then it provides us with a legitimate example. So the objective is to find a model which has got vague objects? Yes, which has vague objects, because Evans and Solomon are claiming that it's necessarily logically impossible for there to be vague objects themselves, because vagueness

25:00 arises from vagueness in reference, primarily. Okay, so what do they say are the vague objects of non-reduced ecomechanics? Well, he would say that they're the persisting electrons I don't know, there's a whole issue of whether there are exist... No, no, no, let's stick to non-realistic quantum mechanics, because here we are looking at a particular model, and so let's take that model to be non-realistic quantum mechanics. And so, you're saying that the persistence of electrons in this model is something vague? Well, not the persistence itself, that persisting electrons, electrons that have cross-temporal identity in an ontological sense, maybe not in an epistemological sense, not one way we can determine, that these electrons are necessarily, or are vague objects. That is, identity statements concerning them are vague, not because of the reference of the single terms used in the identity statement, but because the objects themselves are vague, in some way. Vague because of what? Well, see, this is another question. What causes them to be vague? But the idea is that they're vague not due to the language, but due to the way the objects themselves are vague. But how do they define vague? Well, vague in that it's indeterminate on the truth value of the identity statement A equals B. So the idea is that this statement right here is vague, but not because of the indeterminate reference of A or B. That is, these terminally refer to a persisting electron, but it's because... A and B refers to an electron? Well, A refers to one electron, B refers to one electron, and the idea is that it's vague whether they're equal, whether they're the same electron, but not because of the way that A refers or B refers. Yes, yeah, I understand. But then, I mean, as I said, you can't say it's vague because of the Fermi-Static states, you know, the anti-symmetry of the wave function. Well, I think that's what Noonan would say. It's because of the entanglement, is what he says. Because of the entanglement, right. And the many-body wave function. That's the argument, then. Because of the entanglement, it's vague. Yeah. But the idea, but the problem is... Yeah, how many texts of that? But then I would go on to say that what we should regard then as a substitute for the

27:30 identity of the particle would be the wave function, okay? Because, you see, like, when we say that there's an electron which is at the table which is different from the electron, what is meant by the statement is that don't overlap, okay, so that... Or the overlap is minimal. Right. All is minimal, yeah. Suppose they don't... We have got two wave functions of two particles which are actually entangled, but the wave functions don't overlap, then you can, in fact, you know, for all practical purposes, you know, the phrase that Bell had so much, you can say that, you know, they are distinct particles. Yeah. Okay, so you can... it makes sense then to talk about the subred identity, okay, but in general there would be an overlap because usually there's an exponential tail and the way functions would overlap. And if there is an overlap, then we cannot say that they have got subred identity, you see, because they're entangled and the entanglement does have experimental consequences. I think there's a lot to be said for this position and one of the things that I think directly bears upon these series of articles if it's true that if we were to refer if persisting electrons cause us to have vague identity or vague objects to what extent is that the best interpretation or to what extent does that tell against or interpreting quantum mechanics as expressing persistent objects. I think also it's time to park on my worries here, which is it's really I suppose you took a quite in view of this and say, okay, well, we're prepared to, if you really think that, you know, okay, these arguments by someone like Evans aren't, don't represent some ultimate sort of platonic truths about logic or whatever, then you have certain you could change your axiomatic structure in logic or in sat theory or whatever and this wouldn't go through but we'd really

30:00 rather do that on the basis of experience a kind of toy model which is what those electrons do is they jump together inside a bag inside a bag that we can't get into and one of them pops out and then identical classical billiables otherwise. But if that's not really an experience that we have, then we'd be unwilling to revise this. And then if you're not acquiring it, then you might just say, well, look, this is just so over or over plausible that I'm going to impose this way of talking on any physical theory that I have, even if that means I need to circumcute a bit. So I think he probably needs to make explicit which of those things, what he's really trying to do. True. Is he trying to undermine this from an apriorite standpoint? by just saying, well, imagine these electrons are jumping to back and they jump out, say this undermines the earth by a plausibility of this. Or is he saying we should revise it in the light of experience and then soon? Yeah. Well, if you send that to all this stuff you're saying about what's going on with this physics, it's right on. I mean, actually, both would take the view that that the electrons are not big objects because in the bone theory, the electron is a well-defined trajectory, so it's got this cross-technical identity and you can distinguish between two electrons in other words, and in fact they've got different phase-time trajectories. So in fact, within the bone thing, everything is determinate, and so it's really, it's just a classical case as far as this. Well, within the Bohm theory, it blows his argument right out of the water because he's making the claim that this is due to ontic indeterminacy where, in the Bohm theory, if there's any indeterminacy, it would only be epistemic. Yes, and everything is put onto the model of color theory. So that there wouldn't be vague objects again, but... So in fact, everything that he's saying is manifestly in the face of that in the face of Bohm's interpretation everything he's saying is manifest

32:30 is interpretation dependent and it's dependent not what's more on his own interpretation which you can say just doesn't correlate with any extant any extant interpretation I mean I don't think it does I don't think it comes close to I certainly would say it's the most plausible interpretation but it doesn't come close to any of the You don't think it's a consistent interpretation? Well, in so far as he makes about two paragraphs of claims, and that defines the interpretation. I'd say it's not an acceptable interpretation upon which to put much weight. Well, to not put the kind of weight that he's trying to do so philosophically, he would have to demonstrate the consistency of what he's doing with a lot more of quantum theory than he does. And particularly against, you know, the standard sort of objections that we've been just parroting. We're just saying, well, look, there's this, this and this sort of attitude which completely go against many of the things he's saying. Well, the Bohm interpretation of the dual ontology, you see, that the particle and the wave function they both exist together so what does he say about the wave function does he say the wave function is vague too no i mean of course we have the difficulty of that there's not a great interpretation presented here it's only a couple paragraphs what i was assuming that his interpretation of quantum mechanics was something like this that the wave function describes persisting electrons and the persisting electrons are actually what exists and are enduring or whatever I always get this I think there is a technical difference between the two but I always forget anyway that these are what actually exist and the wave functions as an expression of how they behave but and because of the way the wave function describes them these objects must behave as vague objects so he doesn't he doesn't take I don't think he takes the wave function as the thing that exists no so the wave function specifies the state of the electron

35:00 Yeah. So the question then is, when he talks about the electron, that the electron consists of a sequence of states that are described by the wave function, like in the case of the evolutionary definition, or is he saying that the electron is existing, say like in the Bohm picture, where Bohm actually gives a space-time description. electron is a well defined trajectory. So that's not clear to me what you mean by saying that electron exists. Yeah well that the basic things of the world are persisting electrons that they just behave in very different ways than we expected and that the wave function is a description that encodes our information about the electron. So all that we know about the electron or or even from an ontological point of view, when we talk about the electron, what we really mean is that at any given time, the wave function, that is the state of the electron. Is that what he's saying? My question is, is there something more than this wave function? Like in the book, there is something more, but not in the other picture, there's nothing more. Yeah, well I don't think he's going by, a very literal interpretation. He doesn't take the basic ontology to be the way it functions itself. I don't think he does. If persistence of an electron is an important thing, how are we to take it that persistence is different? I mean, the sort of classical way is through basically the space-time trajectory. You know where it is. These are other, of course, problems. I think... The question I want to support is if he's taking to be the space-time which defines whether or not this this electron here is the same as this electron here because there's a continuous trajectory between these two then he's broadly speaking in in the bohemian picture it's certainly an album a bohemian picture he may not necessarily be adopting the specific bohemian trajectory he has to be adopting a set of trajectories which are compatible with the evolution of the problem of distribution over space-time position, the position of the space, at which there are many of those things, but nonetheless they would all be taken to be essentially the Bohmian position. And in that case, there

37:30 is no vagueness. And if he isn't taking that position as to what defines what persistence is, then I want to know what defines the persistence. It's got to be a good recognition Yes, because you could be taking, well, the standard thing would be, you know, when a physicist says that there's two separate electrons, there's like four particle purposes, there's something that looks a lot like a weight packet, and there are two weight packets a long way away. But then if he's taking that, that completely breaks down as soon as they get them to the same place, and so he can't. Yeah. Which, of course, he does accept, again, a valid point about why this isn't the best interpretation of quantum mechanics I don't I don't I think it's quite clear he's not taking a Bohmian view simply because it would undermine his argument and very obviously I mean he's not sufficiently defining no he's not easy I think what he's doing is just saying hey assume that electrons are persisting objects and then interpret quantum mechanics from there. Okay. Well, I mean, he can take the Copenhagen view, which is big. A lot of people think that it's not even an interpretation of quantum mechanics, specifically what it is, you see, but from the Copenhagen view, the wave function is like a weather report. You know, there is, there is, you know, you, what it is, the wave function is, according to the Copenhagen Bureau, a catalogue of probabilities for the outcomes of possible measurement that you can do on the particle. In fact, John Wheeler expressed in the following way that the wave function is the particle but the weather report is to snow. You know, it snowed out when you bring the weather report, you see. So from the taken point of view, the wave function is epistemological and the particle is ontological. I think you'd be taking something very similar to this, but without fully addressing the measurement problem. I mean, the measurement problem is not even mentioned here and I think he would say that measurement problem solved because all I'm trying to do is show that it's plausible for their new quantum. Except it's important the measurement problem be solved in a way which doesn't make our vagueness epistemic. True. True. True. So it does matter in a certain sense. But he's saying that it doesn't matter in what reality, whether the theory turns out

40:00 to be false because all it wants to do is show that it's plausible, that there is a clear way in which there could be vague objects. Copenhagen Interpretation doesn't really solve the measurement problem. It is true that if you take this view that the wave function is epistemic, then you're not surprised that the wave function should undergo a sudden change when you make a new measurement and you've got new information. So because the wave function of the epistemic to begin with, and the additional knowledge changes the wave function. From that point of view, the measurement problem wouldn't bother us. But on the other hand, the Copenhagen Interpretation doesn't define what a measurement is. You see, like when an electron is an atom, you know, then there is no measurement and you have got this wave function which you get by solving solving the equation, but then it's only when it comes into contact with a macroscopic instrument that you say that the measurement has taken place. So what does macroscopic mean? Yeah. The problem in the interpretation is to give a number that you can use to say that a given system becomes macroscopic, say after it has got X number of particles or its energies. and also it doesn't really tell you where the boundary is between the observed system and the observer. It becomes very problematic when you do quantum cosmologies, because there is no observer outside the universe. Or quantum consciousness or anything like this as well. The universe can do everything there is, so there is no observer outside. It's how to interpret the wave functions of the universe like Hawking does. I mean, in cosmology, people feel compared to take either the average view or the boonian view, because it's a problem of... What about a, what's the other view, the one way that the wave function drives itself into a little piece, when you hit microscopic ground? Oh, GLW would depend on the collapse. Oh, the GLW. GLW is the... Yeah, it's also possibly real. But there was some work that I did with Aronoff and Whiteman in which we showed that the wave function of a single particle can be observed, which is by means of a special class of measurement that we call protective measurement. Protective because it doesn't let the wave function collapse. So this means that you can think of the wave function as being ontological,

42:30 and not epistemological as a problem. Because since you have got only one system, you cannot give a probabilistic interpretation for the wave functions with this class of measurements, because to give physical meaning to probabilism, you need to have an ensemble on particles. And prior to the introduction of predictive measurements, the standard way in which people determine the wave function was by doing experiments on ensemble of particles, and then the wave function was statistically reconstructed on these measurements, whereas we showed that we can actually do it for a single system. So there is really no statistical reconstruction. It's like you observe the physical wave classically. So you don't have to do it statistically. The wave can be interpreted as a physical object and not as a weather report. not something that's epistemological or something that's ontological. So that's why I believe that you can think of the wave function as being ontological. But still I would say that in some sense it is vague because the relationship between the wave function and space-time is vague. You see, the Bohmian picture is not vague because the wave function can be thought of as a physical wave, like a classical wave, and the particles also, like you can think of it as a classical object, which is a well-defined space-time trajectory. So the relationship between space-time and the wave-function is something that is very well defined in the Bohemian picture, and also the relationship between the particle and space-time. But I'm skeptical of that because the wave-functions really belong to the Helvet space, and to relate the wave-functions that belong to the Helvet space, the usual space-time description that we use,

45:00 one has to introduce operators like the position operator. And the position operator is problematic in realistic quantum theory. Yeah, I agree. These are these valid points, but I think the vagueness you're talking about here is sort of a different one than they're considering in these articles and that it's not... It's vague what the final theory is going to be like versus whether vague objects actually exist values for certain very obvious statements. Can you give me some examples? Well, the x equals a equals b, right? x equals b, what is x? Well, a equals b, I mean, whether this can be vague or not, in the sense that it has indeterminate truth value. So the vagueness we understand here is that it's based on indeterminate truth values. And not so much in the final form of that. Can we not just say that Loeb bases it on non-existent quantum mechanics therefore what he does offer as a possibility isn't really a possibility? As much as Tom says he's looking for something plausible just to show that it could be, he is basing it on a physical example which perhaps we'd say there isn't. I think you'd do better to try a bit of intuition mongering about some sort of thought experiment where you have classical video balls vanishing into something in principle. Well, maybe we don't even have to criticise him at this point. Maybe his argument just still doesn't go through. I mean, let's for the time being assume that this is at least a consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics and that it provides, I mean, at least, right, and that it provides a plausible example about how objects can be vague so that it's not necessarily the fact that they can't. It's not necessarily, well, Evan's argument is, again, about the necessity of there not being vague objects. So vagueness means that is equal to A, equal to B, does not have a truth value? Yes, but that the lack of truth value isn't due to the lack of reference of the terms, or the indeterminate reference of the terms.

47:30 Because, you know, there's two ways you can lack truth value. So you're talking about A is equal to B in an ontological sense. yes that is that is neither true nor false yes that's the state that's the definition of vagueness vagueness for vague objects this is this is this is at least how evans does it and this would be a if objects didn't violate this and they would they would be vague if it was indeterminate whether they were equal to each other then they'd be vague okay but how do you then define a and b oh well these are um these these are these refer to objects of some sort vague objects i mean they're just singular terms so A and B they're determinate in their reference I mean they're two objects that are vague, they refer to objects that are vague so A and B are referential? yes, determinately referential this is the important part that is the vagueness isn't based upon any vagueness of reference and so the question is the question I'm posing is that even if we accept mechanical example that he gives along with the idea of persisting objects whether this is enough to demonstrate that the vagueness is not due to the lack of reference or determined reference I think there's another David Lewis article where he sort of brushes on the one with the cat on the man And he's trying, he provides some other argument to Gantz there. I was wondering if he, you know, I don't think it was quite a good argument, but I don't. I don't know David Lewis' view on this, unfortunately. I'm assuming that he's probably with Evans, though. Yeah? Did you read that? No, I didn't. Because he does write an article, which I actually should probably go look at, in analysis on understanding what Evans is actually saying. Yeah, it's in here. And you probably wrote a bunch of other stuff. The one with something like... The Leifert Rider. Yeah. The Leifert Rider. There's a paradox with a cat with a thousand powers. Well, the idea I'm posing, right, is basically Lowe's example. Does it go through as he's formulated it and accepting his premises?

50:00 And the first problem, of course, is the one raised by Noonan saying that even if you accept that you can't distinguish between properties that are based on the determinate identity of the two objects, and therefore you can't use these to distinguish between them, that there are other properties that you can clearly use to distinguish between them, and therefore that the lack of any determined truth value must be due to the reference of the terms. Now, is this a valid criticism? Does everyone understand Noonan's critique of Lowe's argument? So Noonan accepts basically Lowe's argument that you can't, Lowe's argument was that you can't accept the property x equals a as a property a and b because you can't distinguish x equals a from x equals b because it's indeterminant whether a equals b so you're begging the question basically by using this property to distinguish between the two and arrive at this conclusion Noonan says okay we'll accept this but there are other properties that a determinately has and b doesn't determinately have and therefore canon will be and the example he uses in well I don't know if he uses it himself but the one that that Lowe brings up later is the idea that accepting close example as he said as he puts it that a possesses the determinant property that it is absorbed while as B it is indeterminate whether A is absorbed or whether B is absorbed so the fact is is that since they They cannot be identical. I need to go now. I have a question about the talk I'm going to be giving. Yeah, sure. Do you have a view graph projection? Yeah, there will be an overhead. Do you want an overhead? Go ahead. No problem. I'll make sure there's one there. There's one there. Any other questions? Yeah, that's all right. Yes, excuse me, you're an alternative?

52:30 Yeah, I'll be here. And then not here next time? Next time I'll be here. I'll be here for a full year. Yeah, fine. Good. Attendance will probably be a little better at the top. A lot of people haven't yet returned from their vacations. Oh, really? Well, Chris is on... Yes, yes, yes. I don't think Jack is back in time yet either, so. Well, anyway, thank you for coming in, Jack. I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow. So what are you talking on? Classical statistical field theories and specifically non-local classical statistical field theory that tallies with Kleingarten the quantized and non-local classical statistical field theories. There's a specific one that matches up with the quantized Kleingarten field and what have you. Yeah. But... Okay. Thanks for having me. It's interesting. All right. I see you. I see you. I see you. I see you. The trouble I have with this is that this whole thing of can there be visual objects seems to me to reduce to can there be a three-token logic? Because, I mean, all this stuff is, you basically say every statement is either true, false, or indeterminate. That's a three-valued logic. Is this claiming that there can be no consistent three-valued logic? Because, I mean, that would be sufficient to say there are vague objects, because then you could have a consistent three-valued logic, and that would apply to these objects. That's conceivable. I don't think that that is... That would be adequate, at least in some views, to say that there are, because I'm sure that would say there would be some statements. As soon as there were, you have to say there's a model in which A equals B has got one intermediate value. Intermediate, which you can call indeterminate, just because you can call it what you like. Yes, yes. Right, so I would say... So, I mean, that seems to be an enormously strong claim, given that there are people who spend their lives developing three times three times three times three times.

55:00 I would be hesitant to agree with that, because, first of all, Evans isn't claiming that there can't be indeterminate truth values. But I think what he's working under the assumption is that any indeterminate truth value that there is is due to a lack of reference or indeterminate reference of the object. But this purports to be a claim that, saying that there is any statement that this is indeterminate, that whether this is equal to this is indeterminate, is inconsistent. Ah, I see, I see what you're saying. And in fact, it results in a contradiction. And that says, and that must be applicable to any 3.3-valued logic, mustn't it? I mean, insofar as, I mean, you might perhaps not have Leibniz's law in your logic, but... Yeah, well, I'd say it would probably depend on how you develop the logic, because, I mean, the thing is, is because you have vague objects, it seems plausible to say that these properties, that you can attribute properties to the objects. Because they're actually objects, right? But all the properties... It's a meaningful statement. But all the properties of those objects may be vague. But some would be determinately true. Well, in almost any example you can give, you can probably give one that was determinedly true. And the one with his example that it's absorbed, that A is absorbed in B, it's determined that A is absorbed while it isn't determined that B is absorbed. See, the idea is that if you want to use like an intuitionist logic, I mean I'm no specialist on intuitionist logic, so I'm just going off the scene of that such a thing exists. Right. If you're going to use something like this then, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, But you would say that any statement using A and B that was indeterminate was indeterminate because it was nonsense because you couldn't verify it. Right, but I mean intuitionist logic is only one example of A, because I mean there are different relationships between not and door. But my point is that this doesn't tell against all tripartic logic. I think this would actually, you're right, this would probably, this is something that three-value logic would have to deal with. Well, it would have to demonstrate that it's not inconsistent, or But you know, then again, three-value logic would probably also

57:30 what, I would assume that it would restrict Leibniz's law in some way. Right. Because you can't just let that run free. There's going to where Leibniz's law is going to be indeterminate. Right. I mean, there's the obvious point at which the three-valuableness of this particular set of statements comes in, and that is at the point where he says it's not indeterminate whether A equals A. And of course, that not indeterminate should mean one feels either A equals A or A is not equal to A. It's not the statement A equals A. Not indeterminate A equals A is not the statement A equals A. It's the statement A equals A is not equal to A, and yet he doesn't put that in, and yet if he did put that in, it's not clear to me that he would actually be able to derive the following lines. What, not indeterminate that A equals A? Well, this thing is that by saying it's not indeterminate, he's saying it's neither true or false, and I'm making no claims about anything more than that, and if you define If you define not indeterminate to mean either true or false, then... But this is a very uncontroversial claim, isn't it? I mean, even in a system that would admit that there are certain sentences that are meaningful that don't have truth values, it's not going to be A equals A. I suppose you might just generalise that so that there's a fear of that, you know, you're mapping on, you know, you get definite truth or definite false for any identity statement, you know, through value logic. See, the point is that by making this claim here, which is a peculiar claim, just in evidence paper number three, it's not indeterminate whether A equals A. Instead of writing down the actual statement you want to say here, which is that A equals A or A is not equal to A, because that's the statement that's equivalent to not indeterminate A equals A, At least it is on a specific choice of three-valued logic. Yes? I mean, that's a true statement, after all. A equals A is a true statement, then A equals A or not equal to A is also a true statement. But of course, B equals A or B is not equal to A is also a true statement. because the second one is true

1:00:00 rather than the B equals A to one B true B is not equal to A is true so in other words it's both true for B and for A that A is not indeterminate B now I don't know if this would address your point in particular but we have to realize that vagueness isn't about the order right I understand that But not indeterminate means that it is or, right? It is true or false if it's indeterminate, if it's not indeterminate. But again, what I'm saying here is that you can put this whole argument purely in terms of statements within a three-valued logic. But not necessarily, because a three-valued logic might come, might overlap with a classical two-valued logic concerning equals. Right, but I say that any consistent three-valued logic wouldn't allow you to make this claim not now that A equals A, and not mean something like A equals A or is not equal A. Yeah, of course, true statement. True, but then again, you know, but Evans, I think, could be, say, fine, but I'm not adding the or in there. I only need that A equals A. And you let determinant B that there is an actual truth value. But the statement A equals A or A equals not equal to A, that's true, but it's also true that B is not equal to A, sorry, B is equal to A or B is not equal to A. So B and A are equal in that respect, albeit because they take a different part of it. All right, you'll ask me there. I'm sure that's my fault. Except that that, of course, is the opposite statement to number one. So, I mean, I do understand that this is something that if you're going to have a three-value logic, that this is something you're going to have to deal with, but I don't think it tells against all three-value logics. Well, I mean, I think that's right. That, you know, they're going to get around the ways of this, because they're going to accept most of these arguments, simply because... Most of these derivations. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, or any lack of truth value. I mean, the thing is, is that each one of these lines has, well, each one of the complete sentences actually has a truth value associated with it, except for, well, no, they all have truth values, right?

1:02:30 Well, they're in the truth or false. Yeah, they're all in the truth or false. And that's the purpose of it. Yeah, that's the purpose. And if it's going to be a tri-part logic, they're just going to say, well, you know, that, well, I don't know what they would say. Well, you would simply take the novelists out and you would implement everything in terms of true, false, or indeterminate as a three-value logic instead of... But you could still probably come up with the same argument, can't you? Well, it depends on exactly how you define your three-value logic. But then again, all the time... And people do find particular three-value logics to be plausible. But now, my question is, though, is that if this argument wasn't to go through for a three-value logic, would that be simply because the sentences used in the argument were meaningless? That is, their terms didn't definitively refer, or whether it was because they were vague objects? Well, of course, as far as mathematics is concerned, it doesn't matter whether a thing refers or not. I mean, that's simply... Oh, but it does. It does, because you're saying that the variables refer to... You simply set up... This is the set of true statements by fiat, and then you say anything which can be derived from those by this system of derivation rules is true. That's your definition of truth, but it doesn't matter whether it refers or not whatsoever. Well, but the thing is that the terms naturally refer. right but now we're getting to questions of interpretation well true but you know even in any interpretation of that system whether it's normalistic or realistic or what have you I think that it's clear that the terms will refer and definitively refer to well no terms in any mathematical statement that's ever been made refer to others refer to others right but But, I mean, now I'm getting into my anti-realists. Yeah, well, you know, and you're glad, but, you know, the thing is that you're not going to undermine reference. But it might undermine... I'm sorry, correct. Well, yes, of course, if I take a causal reference point of view, then, of course, I can't undermine, because, I mean, specifically, I'm willing to be kind enough about this reference. Well presumably you're going to be referring to something that isn't, well that's based on something that you're willing to accept that stands for numbers

1:05:00 or you're not going to be referring to a number that's out there but you're still going to be referring to something it's going to be shorthand for something I guess we should get into this My point is that the mathematical statements aren't going to suffer the same well, maybe My point is that vagueness or the indeterminacy of the truth value of A equals B is based on the indeterminacy of the reference. And I don't think that Lowe clearly shows that it isn't. Or makes it even plausible that it isn't, because again he runs into the same Evans-style argument that Noonan presents to him again. An argument which is based to show that, is meant to show that you know, this contradiction is based because you're assuming that your singular terms definitively refer at the beginning and they don't. I think this is the point, isn't it, that in sociological three-valued, then this statement one is the same as saying v brackets, one equals one, where v's are mapping from statements onto old one or something like that so with that is that what i don't know i mean introducing introducing these things as operators on sentences yes then you then you then have a system then you can then have whatever system of logic you like for signing two thousand sentences but he's just assuming that we've got a truth finding one here or whatever true is in your logic so and here he's just inferring you know because he starts out with one another statement says one then he's only going to get ones and zeros and this putting this thing here isn't the same saying the neuroscience truth to and B is you know 0.56 or whatever is. Right but that's I mean that's a specific logic. But I'm just saying it could be and I suppose that's a sort of general idea. Well a three value logic specific just has truth or it has three tokens. Yes, yes. Indeterminate or unprovable or, depending on precisely what you take that third thing to be, determines

1:07:30 what the relations between the different logical algorithms are. But otherwise what you have to do is you have to model the maps and the works of that onto some number of the set of pertaining true-false and determiner, and these statements with an apple is in, they're going to be one of the works that you have to map. Can we say this? Assuming basic first order logic with identity, that you can't have vague objects under Evans' proof. That's what Evans is trying to show, right? Now, I'm not saying there aren't logics where you could. in fact I think there's one quite clear that you could if you're willing to accept what French calls an object an object that is he tries to give you a set theory that can handle objects that don't have clear self-identity right, yes well he doesn't he's talking about it I did a cross and he's making most of the headway there fine, but now there's questions So there's two questions. There's one, to what extent can you call an object an object if there's no self-identity? And two, to what extent are you really willing to abandon first-order logic with identity? Quite a lot. I don't know. I mean, it's a perfectly good mathematics, but whether it actually is mathematics that the world is always a model of first-order greater object, for instance, is entirely dubious. There are some situations where it's not adequate to describe the world as a first-order greater object. Right, but you're not necessarily saying it's wrong. Well, of course I just said it's wrong. No, no, you're saying that you need something stronger. Well, I'm saying that if you take the world and you say, I will now use logic to describe the world, it just doesn't, it can't. Yeah, but does this tell against accepting first order logic where you can apply it? Of course. I mean, that's true of anything. If you can apply it, then you can apply it.

1:10:00 Well, no, but the thing is that it seems like such a basic truth that sure there's something on it that you can't describe it, but in its own... But where something is applicable, it's applicable, is what you're saying. No, no, I'm saying it's acceptable. It's something that you don't want to abandon. Right, if something's applicable, then it's acceptable. Let's go on and say, let's talk about, I mean, yeah, I understand your point, but there's still something different that I can't really quite express, but let's go on and say, well, to what extent do you want to get rid of classical set theory? for some quasi-sync. I take exactly the same view, that where it applies with reasonable accuracy, wherever it applies with adequate accuracy, you can use any particular mathematical structure. True, true. And given the specific interpretation you choose for that mathematics, obviously. But my point is, to what extent do we have more of a reason of accepting a more traditional logic over one that's a little revisionist, simply so it can allow vague objects? Well, I wouldn't say that allowing vague objects is a particular... I mean, what you're saying is you're going to extend classical logic by adding in the concept of vague objects. In other words, you're going to extend the axiomatic structure for concept theory by adding these extra axioms and modifying the existing axioms. ways and then you're going to say this and then if that is not a consistent mathematics then you'd have to very good reason to adopt that mathematics and in preference to adopting a different set of mathematics which is a mathematically provably consistent conceivably although of course it's not so they're both consistent it's just that the axioms of one is more intuitive oh sure I'm quite to be honest, I am very happy to accept pragmatic reasons for adopting a theory. Oh, and, well, way off track. Where can we ground ourselves? Let's go back and ask if Lowe does succeed in his argument based on his own premises. Or do you think Noonan is effectively demolishing? Well, I guess there's all this stuff about text. Yeah, true.

1:12:30 That seems... Well, also a little bit, but I think, I don't know, I thought I'd have wanted to acknowledge just to read stuff, but sit down and try to scribble some things. Yeah, yeah, well, the text argument, from what I understand, it's just not very plausible from the get-go, I don't think. Alright, even if after B is admitted at time T1, we'll say, right? We'll say T0 is when A is absorbed, T1 is when B is admitted. Even when B is admitted and we can say, alright, now it's definitive that B has been admitted and so there it's not vague. You say, take the point between T1 or T0 and T1, and he's saying any time between there, or before actually T1, excuse me, It is indeterminate whether B is the particle that was emitted, that will be emitted. So he goes into a tensed argument. Now, I think Hawley just rips him apart for the right reasons, saying that any sort of indeterminacy that you might have about the outcome of emission isn't one about assigning the property of B the one admitted. will be admitted at T9 in the example, T1 in the example. So the idea is, let me see, let's go over to the board and see if I can actually write anything down here. So I got some property, right? We'll say E is admitted, B is admitted, or excuse me, we're not doing wave functions. So that's the property that B is admitted. Now at T1, which is the time that the particle is admitted, and T0 to 1 is absorbed. So T1, this is determined. rhymes which is the upside down. No, it's this one, right? It's determined that B was admitted. And so it's determined that B possesses the property that it was admitted at T1. This is at T1. You can make this statement and it's true. So you could go through with

1:15:00 the Evans-style argument and say that B cannot equal A by Leibniz's Law. But let's take a time before t1 we can't make this statement because what what i think lowe is claiming is that it is it is indeterminate before before the particle is actually admitted that it possesses the property that it will be admitted so now you have to take this as text as in you know will be admitted in the future as in had been admitted in the future or had been admitted Now, his justification for this is very, very, very tenuous It's something about the fact that between, before T1, it's unclear I don't even know what it is I mean, I don't think there's any sort of plausible way you can defend this claim Because the fact of the matter is we do know that B, even at this time well, we don't even have to make the statement at this time He's not saying that if you go, it's not an epistemic claim, he's not saying that T-naught, you don't know this, or it's indeterminate this. He's saying that, you know, take a timeless, you pull yourself out of time, talk at a time way after T-one, you can't make a statement like this, even later than T-one, that B-naught wasn't admitted at T-naught. You see what I'm sort of saying? it's it's it's completely it's completely wacky i agree um does he say why is it that you can't make that statement of t-not at later time about t-not i what's he actually saying let's go look at what he actually says it's completely wacky talking about the problem mechanical stuff but so this is just i didn't want to let everybody that yeah that's my problem no i think it's just It's so wacky that I think he actually, well, it's obvious that he abandons it later when he replies. He fully takes it back because it's just complete nonsense. But, what's he saying? Well, he tries to keep the safe face, I think, in this last one. Yeah. I don't think he really says anything there. The T1 is not indeterminate whether B has invented, but it was indeterminate whether A has invented it. I mean, first of all, you wonder why he's introducing tenses in the first place.

1:17:30 And second of all, you know, how these tenses are going to save him? Well, obviously they're designed to give properties to... Yeah. ...to sort of make properties to times so that you can... Yes, so it would be something like this. These would be two different properties, right? been admitted and will be admitted so yes and then this is true this is indeterminate so then then the claim would be that between or before assuming actually after so anytime between absorption and admission it's the objects are vague that is anytime they're entangled they're going to be vague because there is going to be no property like this one to distinguish them but this is obviously wrong this is true because this is false can we not suppose that we knew there was going to be something omitted well we do so the property did exist whether B fitted into it Well, this is exactly, I think, Holly's point is that any indeterminacy you might have about whether B is going to be emitted is due to the quantum mechanics of the situation and not due to the vagueness of the object and the vagueness of the object possessing a property. and once you've actually specified that at some future time once you've actually specified the whole situation through these two times then obviously this indeterminacy that's associated with the quantum mechanical development of the state disappears because you already know the history of the state and so it's not indeterminate that it will be admitted because you already said it will be admitted quantum mechanics is So quantum mechanics used seems to be problematic. He says here it's under the potentials that two electrons, A and B, both exist through the period of time which begins before the capture of one of them and ends after the emission of one of them, just on its own. I know it seems to sort of confuse, but the important feature of the example is of course that time T0 these two electrons exist in entangled or superposed space.

1:20:00 What the hell is it for two of them to exist if you can't say whether they're the same? If it happens that they are the same, there won't be two that exist. Well, no, there's still two that exist. There won't be two electrons. Yeah, exactly. So the question about whether the one emitted is the one absorbed. Yeah, but whether there'll be A and B, or A, B and C, which was always there and was just sitting there. I just thought that language would imply that he doesn't really have a good grasp of what is going on at T Noor. If he's talking about an intangible state, saying that it's uncontentious, like you say, that these two things go through, well, it clearly isn't uncontentious at all. I'm sure, I'm sure. I think, you know, he's thinking about those video balls going to a bag, but perhaps it's more like two lumps of clay. Yeah, that's a good example. I was thinking all throughout all these words to find an example of something that kind of melts into something and comes down. When I was doing knowledge and reality, as you said, you were asking about lumps of clay or lumps of bronze in a statue. You melt them into the statue. Could you take them? But then most people would say that it's in eternity of reference to the property. Yes, yes, are you talking about a lump of bronze in a certain shape or a collection of atoms? Well, I think the basic point is he's not being clear about what he's saying, what he's trying to... So, the best argument I think we can get out of him here is the one Halley gives on 103 in her article. It's number 5, paragraph 5 there. Second, consider the following possible argument. By assumption, it is ontically indeterminate at T-naught whether A is later admitted. So instead of... Yeah, yeah, right. So we're on the same example. Call the entangled electron, which is not A, E. So there's two electrons in there. One's A, one's E. It is indeterminate whether E is later admitted, based upon whether it's indeterminate whether it's A or a separate electron that's admitted later. If there were a fact of the matter about E, there would be a corresponding fact of the matter about A, contrary to our assumption. So each of the entangled electrons is such that it is indeterminate at T0 whether the electron is later emitted, so that both A and B possess the same property. But B is supposed to be one of the entangled electrons. It is uncontentious that the two electrons A and B both exist throughout the period of time,

1:22:30 which begins before the capture of one of them and ends in the emission of one of them, and therefore runs the imagined argument B must have any property shared by A and E. So like A and E, B is such that it is indeterminate at T0 whether it is later admitted. This argument is suggested by Lowe's closing line for it. It is indeterminate whether one of the entangled electrons A is later located outside the atom's outer shell by the same token it is indeterminate whether the other entangled electron B is later located outside the atom's shell. So the idea is that there's two electrons between T0 and T. and some of the one E, and it's indeterminate which one's going to be admitted. We know B is the admitted one, and the argument is that, well, B is going to be identical, it's going to be one of these two, and one of these two possesses the indeterminate property of not knowing whether it's going to be admitted. Therefore, B must possess this property. That's the argument. Now, I think Hawley clearly gets to deals with this argument by saying the claim is that the ontic indeterminacy assumption entails that T nodded is indeterminate whether B is later admitted. If correct, this could undermine Ed Evans solving an argument that his ontic indeterminate assumption is incoherent. The strategy is signed, but the argument fails, since it does not take seriously the ontic indeterminacy assumption. It is supposed to be ontically indeterminate whether B is identical to A, whether B is identical to E, that is not to say that either B is identical to A or B is identical to E, at least not in the classical sense of or. Indeed, B is not determinately identical to A and is not determinately identical to E. There is no reason to suppose that the properties of B and R are those properties shared by A and E, and thus no reason to suppose that B is such that at T0 it is indeterminate whether it will be omitted. So the basic idea is that you can't make this assumption that B is going to be A or E, if you're assuming they're vague objects, because it's vague whether A does equal A, or whether B does equal A, or B does equal E. Whereas truly, in the quantum mechanical situation, B is either A or E. B equals A or E. This itself would have to be vague, if they're vague objects. Which it is.

1:25:00 this itself would have to be, if these three objects are all vague, this would have itself have to be indeterminate. That is, it would be both indeterminate that P equals A or P equals Z. And therefore, you couldn't just assume that they would share properties. So the thing is, is that this argument only goes through once you've abandoned your premise that they're big objects. Is anyone happy with that? Does it look like a sleight of hand? I was happy with it. No, no, not with any particular argument. Well, it's not my argument. I mean, it's Harley's argument. Yes, of course. I think there's the thing, isn't it? He's got to decide. If he is talking about the billiard ball case, then there's no reason to suppose anything other than classical. There's just this special pattern, this special ponton bag, but we wouldn't expect the ponton bag to change the billy pulse or something like that. If you're talking about the clay, don't you think about, like you say, something about reference, and it's, you know, where are our words? You can explain this argument very easily, or you can dispense with this argument very easily with indeterminate reference, can't you? you can say that A and E both determinately refer to something between T1 and T2 but not after T1 whereas B determinately refers to something after T1 but not before and so there's no point in saying that they possess certain properties before or after these times It's Gru Gru is a well understood bracket Fairly well defined too I think it is interesting how the different proper interpretational quantum mechanics would see it because one so like you say in everyone where you take the wave functions as a real thing and other stuff aren't you know it's really there then so well in the first place you're not really defined what we mean by individuals within a wave and we just see that definition is interpretable you know it's a fact definition yeah uh or you've got one with the Yeah, or I don't know how it would happen with the diameter of that, but it's not defined.

1:27:30 It takes the wave functions pretty real. There wouldn't be a persistent reference from one thing to another, so you couldn't claim that this is the same object as this from one place to another. And the only point where it works is Copenhagen, which we can hope it's not. Copenhagen doesn't take this kind of view about particles in between. Copenhagen's very definite that between measurements you can't say anything about what's happening. He wants to say, he wants to make claims about what's happening. Yeah, sort of a modified version of Copenhagen that doesn't take its entire epistemological thing. Well, no, not in spirit, but the fact of the matter is just because these are the three main theories doesn't mean that you can't come up with a consistent interpretation of, well, suit low. That's similar to Copenhagen in the sense is strictly epistemic in what it says but not necessarily in what actually exists but no existing well-developed interpretation does do this with particles with part of identity I mean no one's no one's successfully done that have they or is he even trying I mean what are you doing you're just making some added metaphysical claims that's all that really have no empirical import right but as such I mean you're putting I mean this goes back to the fact that within, to at least the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics that we've thought of quickly, you can't claim to have constructed vague objects in anything like a way that supports Lowe's argument. If you take Lowe's interpretation and say that that is consistent, then of course you can, but you've actually had to make an ontological claim about quantum mechanics in order to make an ontological claim, which this boils down to, about whether there are vague objects. So it's not clear that you've gained very much, particularly since he hasn't got an interpretation, and it's actually a sufficient world development takes seriously anyway. Well, all I can say is that obviously Lowe's interpretation isn't a good one. I don't think any of us would accept it, but all he's trying to do is show that big objects are

1:30:00 possible under some consistent interpretation. I think the point is that you have to be half shut up and say, well, it's so bad that you've not really shown it's as serious. But is it? Is it so bad that it's not a legitimate possibility anymore? I think I'd have to say, in a sense of conceivability, because the Act's new, it doesn't immediately follow that the predictions that you've made based on this sort of thing would be contradictory or ill-defined in some way. But you just say, well, from what we know about all this stuff people have proved about in terms of quantum mechanics and what you need to solve the measurement problem, if we assume that not solving the measurement problem is, in some way, leaving your theory, your theory just doesn't cash out proper possibility. it doesn't work, and so we're fortunate if one of the candidates those people approve I think that's probably what you have to say, and so he's trying to go down the road of if he's trying to go down the road of finding a real world example, it will really cause us to rethink to recancel logic and sound theory so that there's a better place then he's not redone that You want to play the measurement problem card and say look have a consistent theory until you solve this problem so don't start talking to me about plausible alternatives. No, no, you're not making that. Well, not just that, but just say, you know, that would be an example of where this would go wrong, that the cleavage between conceivability and possibility, you know, so I'd like to say that's one example of how he hasn't cashed out a real possibility, but he's played a game, he's played a part But then I'd just say, well, you know, all sorts of things. No, no, no, I understand how many of the concepts he might have made in terms of his understanding of quantum mechanics. You might say that the SAT of all SATs is conceivable, but it's not really a... No, no, I understand this. And you're saying that basically his interpretation is going to run afoul of any attempts to solve the measurement problem. Not necessarily the measurement problem, I think that's putting him probably too far afield in some sense. Yes, but just in terms of telling a consistent picture about, say, saving weight of particle duality,

1:32:30 he's remained a bit agnostic about that. The thing is, his idea of particle is too close to classical. But the thing is, by making it so close to classical, he's actually gone too far away from the sorts of ideas that actually seem to work in interpretations of quantum mechanics or he hasn't gone far enough in the sense that we have a Bohmian sort of interpretation but anything that's not something that goes out of the Bohmian interpretation just doesn't have this idea of persistence of particle identity in it I would tend to disagree this whole idea of the way of particle duality is itself very ill-defined individual interpretation is pretty clear about. I mean, like Bohm is pretty clear about this. Kurt Hagen is entirely clear. It says, between observations, you cannot say anything about what is happening to individual particles. I mean, they're absolutely clear about that, so that you can't think that there's particle identity from one to one. So, I mean, granted, we're trying to extrapolate into a lot of traditional problems based upon his theory, but I don't think it's these problems are obviously or that these other issues are obviously real problems for him because I can come up with a solution for the wave-particle duality based on his interpretation or an interpretation of the wave-particle duality he's just saying like behaves like a wave, behaves like a particle, doesn't matter all I'm talking about are persisting objects and then but can we not just say that by accepting the interpretation he takes, he's running into the problem that Holly's shown I don't know, if he's going to assign, presumably, wave function as a weather forecast to the particle, what happens when they're entangled? You have A and E, and then you didn't have genuine vagueness in the first place, on to vagueness in the first place. Yeah, well, you know, I would tend to agree that even accepting his interpretation is not allowed to actually show that there is quantum vagueness. there is quantum pictures or even to show making it I think Halley's objections are very are accurate and that frankly he's going to come up with a better an example based upon quantum mechanics he's got to come up with a better one and one that doesn't rely on cross-temporal identity like that's where he gave the whole game away

1:35:00 is because you're never going to get it's too difficult to make the claim that singular terms are going to be able to definitively refer to quantum objects over time it's just you can't do it I don't think you can and you can consistently make that plan but then we're talking about a different paper now we're talking about a paper in which someone says at this particular time you have this quantum system maybe a bell pair or whatever and we can talk about problems of these things which makes which makes Evans' argument false system at a particular time, but that's a completely different paper. Yeah, exactly. And you'd have to produce it to convince that it actually would contradict it at a given time. Well, that's what I say. I mean, it's a different paper. It's essentially a different argument, and you'd have to be convinced that evidence's argument actually is applicable in some sort of way to that system. I don't think, honestly, in order to justify it, but yeah, it is a different paper, and you do have to hack it out, and it doesn't. But I think the thing is, you're worried about this, assuming persistence over time, is much like what Emmanuel and I were saying, whether he's got a problem with particularity, because the point is that you need to, either way, you probably need to cash out your persistence over time, You would probably want to define it in some way, and it is an ill-defined property for where it is, and it is a well-defined property for particles, obviously. So essentially, there are most moves you can make, but once you start pushing them on, what do you mean by this identity over time, then you're going to push them into things I would get away from the whole wave-particle duality because it's a very sort of metaphorical way of analyzing it. Go right into the many-body wave function and say, all right, I have a many-body wave function where they're sharing the same single particle states in some superposition. how am I going to definitively refer to them over time? Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, I know that's a better way to play it.

1:37:30 The thing is, is that the crucial part of the argument is that you have to show that well, that it's at least possible for the singular terms on both sides of the identity equation to determinately refer and if we're going to be talking about dichronic unity here that it determinately refer to the same object And all the classical ways that you, all the traditional ways that we've used to establish that they do determinately refer don't work in the quantitative case. Except that they do if you introduce just the Bohmian interpretation. Yes, but then again you're way off the vague objects. Right, you have to actually construct it. You have to construct an interpretation in which there is identity over time, and yet it must not produce Bohmian interpretation. Well, but then you deal with entangled states in a completely different way than the way he's dealing with. I'm saying that just the very fact that they're entangled in the classical interpretation, in the way they are, and what he relies upon in order to say that they're vague, is already enough to undermine the idea of reference, determinate reference. Yes. You can probably push in in a very deep sense, deep in the motion front panel, and say you'll never find, it isn't really a serious possibility, and I've got this rough argument that goes. any possibility you're telling me about, you're going to have to put in you're going to have to put in a determined reference at one point and take it out at another point, and you're not going to find a consistent criterion for being able to do that and so ultimately there's going to be a deeper flaw than just the specifics of the measurement problem. But the measurement problem shows an example of that, because on measurement you can really get a nice pin that you can point to. You can paint the bit where the electron hits blue, or paint a bit on your screen. But are you referring to the measurement, or the value, or the electron? Even there, there's a question of whether you're referring to the electron or just an electron. Yeah, so that's a more problematic problem, but I think, yes, that's one of the major problems, it's symptomatic of, in fact, you're referring almost always to a spot on the stream. So, I mean, there's, that's my big problem, and even, I'd say the argument even extends to synchronic identity, that is, at a given time.

1:40:00 The fact of the matter is, is that if you have entangled things at a given time, you still got the same problem of a many-body wave function that doesn't allow for particular electrons. You can't say the electron. You can only say a electron. I mean, that doesn't mean that there's not an object, I would say, but that you can't terminally refer to them. That's my point. But maybe that's a discussion for another time. I was curious, is there anything anyone wants to actually cover in any future reading? Like a particular paper? Yeah, or a series of papers, or just a topic that someone's interested in. Because there's no point in us reading So, in fact, Thomas, is this something that we could usefully, you know, a paper completely unconnected perhaps with what you're doing, but nonetheless on a determination that you think we could usefully read through? Well, I don't know, so far. It would help your thesis preparation, for instance, conceivably. I'll let you know. I'll see what you think. And equally. So far, I've been doing this. Yeah, exactly. I feel a bit guilty, though, for pushing kind of writing. But if for one week, we can wear our information theoretic hat. So those of us who've turned up to seminars in the philosophy of physics and what have you, philosophy of physics seminars, there are quite a number of those who are on information theoretic approaches, and we're not up to speed on it, but we're not completely up to speed on it. I'd say there's some people who are. I mean, Chris is definitely up to speed. Oh, Chris is certainly up to speed. Hey, hey, hey, yes. But I mean, even those who spent virtually time on it, apart from the seminars, might be able to make... I mean, it'd be good for an interesting paper. Oh, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. I mean, it's like, I wouldn't want to impose on people. We have to grapple with something that, this is the point of the discussion group, it's true. I think you do nothing about these. I'm not sure I want to know. It's for us to actually, you know, discuss it. Yeah. So send me topics. We have a couple of weeks. I think we're only going to have three talks this term, U2 and Jeeva. And so we still have... He's talking. Yes, I have it.

1:42:30 Never mind. Forget. I forget the title. You gave me the title. Right. I'll send it on. Yeah. It is sort of fifth week or something. Six weeks. Six weeks? Yes, six weeks. So we still have something for 7th, 5th, 4th, and 4th. We have three further places where we're planning to read articles, although if anyone wants to be a talk or at the last minute we'll find out as well. So if you've got a week to decide on something at the very least? Yeah, but I would like to sign the reading for the coming, or the week before, soon, so they give people time to actually get it every day. suggest anything for a week or was I going to focus? Well then some articles that I was considering we could go into the quasi-set theory that might be very technical I kind of had difficulties reading the well, where it was mentioned This was a very brief description there is another one that's a little I think a little more in depth but then again it would still be very technical there's also, if we want to stick with identity, problems of identity. Jeremy wrote a paper on it, and you might come in and want to talk to us about it. I think it criticizes Von Frazen, actually, so we can always read Von Frazen in conjunction with it, in his wine mechanics book. Would that be of interest to people? Jeremy's doing, he wants me to go to a few of his things, after this, on I don't think he'd be covering this article. He's doing Von Frossen but he's going to probably do scientific image stuff. So this is quantum mechanics. This is more specific. It's based upon a lot of the stuff he goes over. But if he's doing the beef, though, I'm sure he's just going to do a very general introduction of von Fraunzen's constructive realism, or constructive empiricism. A lot of the beef people do the philosophy of science, right? Oh, they're all... There's philosophy of science because they have to, some of them. There is no philosophy of physics anymore. Right. It's all philosophy of science. There are some physics-related questions, but it's all basically about the philosophy of science.

1:45:00 So there's not... But it used to be that there were two questions, one on a specific philosophy of a specific science, say biology, physics, or there's only two, I think. There was probably another one. But the thing is, they didn't have anyone who was experts in all the other ones. So they only felt competent to teach in a philosophy of physics one, so they thought, why can't offer it? So then they just switched to the philosophy of science. So both questions are generally on philosophy of science. so there's a lot more traditional philosophy of science stuff covered in these beautifuls well actually I think there always were right but I mean people would be interested in going over more of this like any stuff are we getting kind of sick of it I mean I know I'm not sick of it because this is what I'm writing yeah I wouldn't say sick but it would be a bit It could be more about the individual's public zone, the principal of identity and individuals, things like that. What does Simon Solomon say about that? He's got one paper that he's written. I know he has one recently, and I tried to download it but he put it up as .tag and I couldn't compile it. You can't compile it? Yeah, that's his article on Leibniz law on first-order forms. Does he wrap it up? Well, he's proposing it, actually, as a valid... Thank you.