Bradley Monton

The lesson to be learned from the paradoxical St. Petersburg game and Pascal’s Mugging is that there are situations where expected utility maximizers will needlessly end up (with high probability) poor and on death’s door, and hence we should not be expected utility maximizers. Instead, when it comes to decision-making, for possibilities that have very small probabilities of occurring, we should discount those probabilities down to zero, regardless of the utilities associated with those possibilities.

Should the Christian community engage in Christian science  – doing science starting from the standpoint of the Christian evidence base? Plantinga asks this question, and I  argue that the answer is ‘yes’. Moreover, this is an answer that both Christians and atheists can agree upon. Scientific progress should not be shackled by methodological naturalism; instead we need an ecumenical approach to science, which will allow for various high-level research programmes to count as science (including Christian science). If one does science by giving scientific arguments for or against such research programmes, one will fulfil the goal of having science be objective, open, and universal, not constrained by a methodology that favours the naturalistic worldview.

This dissertation is about the ontologies of the main interpretations and theories of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, and about issues regarding how observers are represented in quantum mechanics. I have two main theses, which I don't argue for explicitly, but which are implicitly defended in the context of my discussion of the various interpretations and theories. ;My first thesis is that the ontologies of the various interpretations and theories are importantly incomplete---there are important ways in which they do not tell a full story about what exists in the world. My second thesis is that to judge to what extent an interpretation or theory of quantum mechanics is empirically adequate, one needs to examine how observers are represented in that interpretation or theory. My first and second theses are linked because, by giving an ontology for quantum mechanics, one is specifying what observers are according to quantum mechanics, and what a theory entails about the nature of observers is relevant to determinations of empirical adequacy. ;In the course of defending these two theses, I point out some problems and solve other problems for various versions of quantum mechanics. I discuss the Bare theory, Michael Lockwood's many-minds interpretation, the GRW theory, the Continuous Spontaneous Localization theory, Bohm's interpretation, consciousness collapse theories, David Albert and Barry Loewer's single-mind and many-minds interpretations, and the Copenhagen variant of the modal interpretation. I also discuss the issues of whether belief observables exist, and whether quantum-mechanical self-measurement is possible

I argue that the wave function ontology for quantum mechanics is an undesirable ontology. This ontology holds that the fundamental space in which entities evolve is not three-dimensional, but instead 3N-dimensional, where N is the number of particles standardly thought to exist in three-dimensional space. I show that the state of three-dimensional objects does not supervene on the state of objects in 3N-dimensional space. I also show that the only way to guarantee the existence of the appropriate mental states in the wave function ontology has undesirable metaphysical baggage: either mind/body dualism is true, or circumstances which we take to be logically possible turn out to be logically impossible.“While our theory can be extended formally in a logically consistent way by introducing the concept of a wave in a 3N-dimensional space, it is evident that this procedure is not really acceptable in a physical theory... ” (Bohm 1957, 117)

The question of how to interpret spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics is an open one. One issue involves what link one should use to go from wave function talk to talk of ordinary macroscopic objects. Another issue involves whether that link should be taken ontologically seriously. In this paper, I ague that the link should be taken ontologically seriously; I argue against an ontology consisting solely of the wave function. I then consider three possible links: the fuzzy link, the accessible mass density link, and the mass density simpliciter link. I show that the first two links have serious anomalies which render them unacceptable. I show that the mass density simpliciter link, in contrast, is viable.

Ruetsche (1996) has argued that van Fraassen's (1991) Copenhagen Variant of the Modal Interpretation (CVMI) gives unsatisfactory accounts of measurement and of state preparation. I defend the CVMI against Ruetsche's first argument by using decoherence to show that the CVMI does not need to account for the measurement scenario which Ruetsche poses. I then show, however, that there is a problem concerning preparation, and the problem is more serious than the one Ruetsche focuses on. The CVMI makes no substantive predictions for the everyday processes we take to be measurements.

The doctrine of intelligent design is often the subject of acrimonious debate. Seeking God in Science cuts through the rhetoric that distorts the debates between religious and secular camps. Bradley Monton, a philosopher of science and an atheist, carefully considers the arguments for intelligent design and argues that intelligent design deserves serious consideration as a scientific theory. Monton also gives a lucid account of the debate surrounding the inclusion of intelligent design in public schools and presents reason why students' science education could benefit from a careful consideration of the arguments for and against it.

We argue that any superluminal theory Tis empirically equivalent to a non-superluminaltheory T★, with thefollowing constraints onT★ : T★ preservesthe spacetime intervals between events as entailedby T, T★ is naturalistic (as longas T is), and all the events which have causesaccording to T also have causes according toT★. Tim Maudlin (1996) definesstandard interpretations of quantum mechanicsas interpretations `according to which there wasa unique set of outcomes in Aspect's laboratory,which outcomes occurred at spacelike separation’, andMaudlin claims that standard interpretations must benon-local in the sense that there are superluminalinfluences. We show (even assuming Aspect's experimentis ideal) that Maudlin's claim is false.

The doctrine of intelligent design is often the subject of acrimonious debate. _Seeking God in Science_ cuts through the rhetoric that distorts the debates between religious and secular camps. Bradley Monton, a philosopher of science and an atheist, carefully considers the arguments for intelligent design and argues that intelligent design deserves serious consideration as a scientific theory. Monton also gives a lucid account of the debate surrounding the inclusion of intelligent design in public schools and presents reason why students’ science education could benefit from a careful consideration of the arguments for and against it.

Adam Elga takes the Sleeping Beauty example to provide a counter-example to Reflection, since on Sunday Beauty assigns probability 1/2 to H, and she is certain that on Monday she will assign probability 1/3. I will show that there is a natural way for Bas van Fraassen to defend Reflection in the case of Sleeping Beauty, building on van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. This will allow me to identify a lacuna in Elga’s argument for 1/3. I will then argue, however, that not all is well with Reflection: there is a problem with van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. Ultimately I will agree with Elga’s 1/3 answer. David Lewis maintains that the answer is 1/2; I will argue that cases of forgetting can be used to show that the premiss of Lewis’s argument for 1/2 is false.

Metaphysicians sometimes appeal to physics to establish claims about the fundamental nature of the world. But given the current state of inquiry in physics, where there are two most fundamental theories that are incompatible, such arguments of physics-based metaphysics are problematic. I support this line of thought by focussing on two sorts of problematic arguments, special-relativity-based arguments against presentism and big-bang-based arguments in favor of the existence of God. I am not arguing that physics-based metaphysics can’t be done; I am just arguing that extant examples of physics-based metaphysics are flawed. I close by considering various ways that future versions of physics-based metaphysics could potentially be successful.

This paper delves into McTaggart’s metaphysical account of reality without time, and compares and contrasts McTaggart’s account with the account of reality given by modern physics. This comparison is of interest, because there are suggestions from contemporary physics that there is no time at the fundamental level. Physicists and philosophers of physics recognize that we do not have a good understanding of how the world could be such that time is unreal. I argue that, from the perspective of one who is trying to understand modern physics, McTaggart’s metaphysical views do provide some insight into how reality can be timeless at the fundamental level, but the insight that they provide is limited.