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13An Assessment of Contemporary Polish OntologyIn Contemporary Polish Ontology, De Gruyter. pp. 271-294. 2019.
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IntroductionIn Tomasz Bigaj & Christian Wüthrich (eds.), Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics, Brill | Rodopi. 2015.
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Essentialism and modern physicsIn Tomasz Bigaj & Christian Wüthrich (eds.), Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics, Brill | Rodopi. 2015.
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Plugging holes in sophisticated substantivalismIn Antonio Vassallo (ed.), The Foundations of Spacetime Physics: Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. 2022.
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42Counterparts, Essences and Quantified Modal LogicLogic and Logical Philosophy 1-14. forthcoming.It is commonplace to formalize propositions involving essential properties of objects in a language containing modal operators and quantifiers. Assuming David Lewis’s counterpart theory as a semantic framework for quantified modal logic, I will show that certain statements discussed in the metaphysics of modality de re, such as the sufficiency condition for essential properties, cannot be faithfully formalized. A natural modification of Lewis’s translation scheme seems to be an obvious solution …Read more
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185Entanglement and non-factorizabilityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (3): 215-221. 2013.Quantum mechanics tells us that states involving indistinguishable fermions must be antisymmetrized. This is often taken to mean that indistinguishable fermions are always entangled. We consider several notions of entanglement and argue that on the best of them, indistinguishable fermions are not always entangled. We also present a simple but unconventional way of representing fermionic states that allows us to maintain a link between entanglement and non-factorizability.
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18How to Justify the Symmetrization Postulate in Quantum MechanicsJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 53 (3): 239-257. 2022.The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and correct one argument in support of the symmetrization postulate in quantum mechanics. I identify the central premise of the argument as a thesis specifying a particular ontic property of quantum superpositions. The precise form of this thesis depends on some underlying assumptions of a metaphysical character. I compare the exchange degeneracy argument with alternative formal arguments for the symmetrization postulate, and I discuss the role and meaning…Read more
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358How Humean is Bohumianism?Foundations of Physics (10): 1-18. 2020.An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of its most fundamental components and their spatiotemporal relations (the so-called Humean mosaic). There are well-known arguments in the literature purporting to show that in quantum mechanics the Humean supervenience principle is violated, du…Read more
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20Synchronic and diachronic identity for elementary particlesEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3): 1-17. 2020.The main focus of this paper is on the notion of transtemporal identity applied to quantum particles. I pose the question of how the symmetrization postulate with respect to instantaneous states of particles of the same type affects the possibility of identifying interacting particles before and after their interaction. The answer to this question turns out to be contingent upon the choice between two available conceptions of synchronic individuation of quantum particles that I call the orthodox…Read more
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23On Essential Structures and SymmetriesIn Bartłomiej Skowron (ed.), Contemporary Polish Ontology, De Gruyter. pp. 1-24. 2019.
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25On discernibility in symmetric languages: the case of quantum particlesSynthese 198 (9): 8485-8502. 2020.In this paper I consider the question of whether absolute discernibility is attainable in symmetric languages. Simon Saunders has proven that all facts expressible in first-order language with identity can be equivalently stated within its symmetric sublanguage. I use this result to show specifically how particles of the same type can be absolutely discerned in the permutation-invariant language of the quantum theory of many particles.
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87Counterfactuals and Spatiotemporal EventsSynthese 142 (1): 1-19. 2004.One of the basic assumptions of David Lewis's formal semantics of counterfactuals is that the crucial relation of comparative similarity between possible worlds is a linear ordering.Yet there are arguments that when we take into account relativistic features of space-time, this relationshould be only a partial ordering. The first part of the paper deals with the question of how to formulate appropriatetruth conditions for counterfactuals under the supposition of a partial ordering of possible wo…Read more
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10Entanglement of N Distinguishable ParticlesStudies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 27 (40). 2012.
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51Are field quanta real objects? Some remarks on the ontology of quantum field theoryStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 62 145-157. 2018.
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11How to strengthen Bell's theorem using counterfactualsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41 (1): 58-66. 2009.
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37This is an extended critique of comments made by Abner Shimony and Howard Stein on Henry Stapp’s proof of the non-locality of quantum mechanics. Although I claim that ultimately Stapp’s proof does not establish its purported conclusion, yet Shimony and Stein’s criticism contains a number of weak points, which need to be clarified.
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103Ungrounded Dispositions in Quantum MechanicsFoundations of Science 17 (3): 205-221. 2012.General metaphysical arguments have been proposed in favour of the thesis that all dispositions have categorical bases (Armstrong; Prior, Pargetter, Jackson). These arguments have been countered by equally general arguments in support of ungrounded dispositions (Molnar, Mumford). I believe that this controversy cannot be settled purely on the level of abstract metaphysical considerations. Instead, I propose to look for ungrounded dispositions in specific physical theories, such as quantum mechan…Read more
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172On temporal becoming, relativity, and quantum mechanicsIn Dennis Geert Bernardus Johan Dieks (ed.), The Ontology of Spacetime II, Elsevier. 2008.In the first section of the chapter, I scrutinize Howard Stein’s 1991 definition of a transitive becoming relation that is Lorentz invariant. I argue first that Stein’s analysis gives few clues regarding the required characteristics of the relation complementary to his becoming—i.e. the relation of indefiniteness. It turns out that this relation cannot satisfy the condition of transitivity, and this fact can force us to reconsider the transitivity requirement as applied to the relation of …Read more
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Kilka uwag w sprawie nezbędności matematyki w nauceFilozofia Nauki 3. 1994.This is an attempt to defend Field's nominalistic program from the criticism raised by K. Wójtowicz in his article. The author argues for the following theses: (a) that Wójtowicz uses the notion of „mathematical theory” broader than Field does it; (b) that he misinterprets the conception of the „abstract counterparts” of nominalistic statements; (c) and that his general evaluation of Field's program is based on too high methodological standards which he applies to the possible nominalistic versi…Read more
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117Do quantum-mechanical systems always possess definite properties dictated by their states?Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 91 (1): 375-394. 2006.In the article the possibility of breaking the eigenvalue-eigenstate link in quantum mechanics is considered. An argument is presented to the effect that there are some non-maximal observables for which the implication from eigenstates to eigenvalues is not valid, i.e. such that although the probability of revealing certain value upon measurement is one, they don't possess this value before the measurement. It is shown that the existence of such observables leads to contextuality, i.e. the thesi…Read more
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7Analyticity and Existence in MathematicsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 62 103-114. 1998.
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611The principle of the identity of indiscernibles and quantum mechanicsPhilosophy of Science 77 (1): 117-136. 2010.It is argued that recent discussion of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII) and quantum mechanics has lost sight of the broader philosophical motivation and significance of PII and that the `received view' of the status of PII in the light of quantum mechanics survives recent criticisms of it by Muller, Saunders, and Seevinck.
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95How to (properly) strengthen Bell's theorem using counterfactualsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 41 (1): 58-66. 2010.Bell’s theorem in its standard version demonstrates that the joint assumptions of the hidden-variable hypothesis and the principle of local causation lead to a conflict with quantum-mechanical predictions. In his latest counterfactual strengthening of Bell’s theorem, Stapp attempts to prove that the locality assumption itself contradicts the quantum-mechanical predictions in the Hardy case. His method relies on constructing a complex, non-truth functional formula which consists of statements a…Read more
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96Counterfactual semantics and quantum physicsSemiotica 2012 (188). 2012.he paper addresses the issue of the applicability of David Lewis’s possible world semantics of counterfactual conditionals to the explication of some quantum-mechanical phenomena. Three main reasons why counterfactual semantics may be useful for this task are given. It is further argued that two possible semantic approaches to counterfactuals involving spatiotemporal events which satisfy requirements of special relativity should be taken into account. The main problem considered in the article i…Read more
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Uwagi o logice trójwartościowejFilozofia Nauki 3. 1997.As it is well known, Jan Lukasiewicz invented his three-valued logic as a result of philosophical considerations concerning the problem of determinism and the status of future contingent sentences. In the article I critically analyse the thesis that the sentential calculus introduced by Lukasiewicz himself actually fulfills his philosophical assumptions. I point out that there are some counterintuitive features of Lukasiewicz three-valued logic. Firstly, there is no clear explanation for adoptin…Read more
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Problem uzasadniania egzystencjalnych założeń teorii (Uwagi na marginesie koncepcji W. V. O. Quine'a)Przeglad Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 3 (3): 45-53. 1992.
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74Dissecting weak discernibility of quantaStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 50 43-53. 2015.
Springfield, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Quantum Nonlocality |