Heidelberg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 9: Quantum Mechanics I

AGPhil 9.2: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 24. März 2022, 11:30–12:00, AGPhil-H14

Evidence for Interactive Common Causes. Resuming the Cartwright-Hausman-Woodward Debate — •Paul M. Näger — University of Münster, Germany

The causal Markov condition (CMC), which is a central principle of causal modelling, requires that conditional on a common cause the correlation between its effects vanishes (the common cause screens off the correlation). Since Salmon (1978) presented the first counterexamples, joined by van Fraassen (1980, 1982) and Cartwright (1988 and many more), there is a debate about whether there are also common causes that fail to screen off (interactive common causes, ICCs), violating the CMC. Since indeterminism is a necessary requirement, the most serious candidates for ICCs refer to quantum phenomena. In her seminal debate with Hausman and Woodward, Cartwright early on focussed on unfortunate non-quantum examples (chemical factory). Especially, Hausman and Woodward's redescriptions of quantum cases saving the CMC remain unchallenged. This paper takes up this lose end of the discussion and aims to resolve the debate in favour of Cartwright's position. It systematically considers redescriptions of ICC structures, including those by Hausman and Woodward, and explains why these are inappropriate, when quantum mechanics (in a dynamic collapse interpretation) is true. It first shows that all cases of purported quantum ICCs are cases of entanglement and then, using the tools of causal modelling, it provides an analysis of the quantum mechanical formalism for the case that the collapse of entangled systems is best described as a causal model with an ICC.