Bremen 2017 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 1: Philosophie der Physik I

AGPhil 1.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 18:00–18:30, GW2 B2900

Is Physics Truly Empirical, Currently? — •Ravi Gomatam — Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology, Mumbai, India

Is Physics Truly Empirical, Currently?

Physics at present treats observations, not as our experiences, but as objective physical events in the external world. This reduction, achieved via the assumption of naïve realism (NR), has served well both in the classical physics and microscopic quantum mechanics (QM). However, when the same QM is extended to the macroscopic regime, naïve realism drastically breaks down at the point of observations, as shown by the famous cat paradox. This is because historically QM developed by presupposing the classicality of the macro world via NR. The measurement problem is a direct result of assuming NR. The Schrodinger equation demands superposition of the wave function, but the classical macro world of determinate pointer states cannot become superposed. Eschewing NR will immediately render the observations to be just our experiences. This step confers two further benefits: physics will become truly empirical; and experiences can superpose. The only mystery in QM then would be: how to objectivize our observations qua experiences, without NR, for doing physics. I motivate a new conception of quantum information called Objective Semantic Information, that could help solve this mystery.