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39Review of Richard Healey's 2008 book. To appear in MIND.
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232Broken Symmetry and SpacetimePhilosophy of Science 78 (1): 128-148. 2011.The phenomenon of broken spacetime symmetry in the quantum theory of infinite systems forces us to adopt an unorthodox ontology. We must abandon the standard conception of the physical meaning of these symmetries, or else deny the attractive “liberal” notion of which physical quantities are significant. A third option, more attractive but less well understood, is to abandon the existing (Halvorson-Clifton) notion of intertranslatability for quantum theories.
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43Measurement outcomes and probability in Everettian quantum mechanicsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1): 153-169. 2007.The decision-theoretic account of probability in the Everett or many-worlds interpretation, advanced by David Deutsch and David Wallace, is shown to be circular. Talk of probability in Everett presumes the existence of a preferred basis to identify measurement outcomes for the probabilities to range over. But the existence of a preferred basis can only be established by the process of decoherence, which is itself probabilistic.
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383Against Field Interpretations of Quantum Field TheoryBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (3): 585-609. 2009.I examine some problems standing in the way of a successful `field interpretation' of quantum field theory. The most popular extant proposal depends on the Hilbert space of `wavefunctionals.' But since wavefunctional space is unitarily equivalent to many-particle Fock space, two of the most powerful arguments against particle interpretations also undermine this form of field interpretation. IntroductionField Interpretations and Field OperatorsThe Wavefunctional InterpretationFields and Inequival…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
| Philosophy of Physical Science |