Philosophers
Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias Samuel Alexander William Alston Anaximander G.E.M.Anscombe Anselm Louise Antony Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Harald Atmanspacher Robert Audi Augustine J.L.Austin A.J.Ayer Alexander Bain Mark Balaguer Jeffrey Barrett William Barrett William Belsham Henri Bergson George Berkeley Isaiah Berlin Richard J. Bernstein Bernard Berofsky Robert Bishop Max Black Susanne Bobzien Emil du Bois-Reymond Hilary Bok Laurence BonJour George Boole Émile Boutroux Daniel Boyd F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad Michael Burke Lawrence Cahoone C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Rudolf Carnap Carneades Nancy Cartwright Gregg Caruso Ernst Cassirer David Chalmers Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Tom Clark Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Anthony Collins Antonella Corradini Diodorus Cronus Jonathan Dancy Donald Davidson Mario De Caro Democritus Daniel Dennett Jacques Derrida René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Dupré John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus Austin Farrer Herbert Feigl Arthur Fine John Martin Fischer Frederic Fitch Owen Flanagan Luciano Floridi Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Bas van Fraassen Michael Frede Gottlob Frege Peter Geach Edmund Gettier Carl Ginet Alvin Goldman Gorgias Nicholas St. John Green H.Paul Grice Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire W.F.R.Hardie Sam Harris William Hasker R.M.Hare Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger Heraclitus R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Baron d'Holbach Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume Ferenc Huoranszki Frank Jackson William James Lord Kames Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan Walter Kaufmann Jaegwon Kim William King Hilary Kornblith Christine Korsgaard Saul Kripke Thomas Kuhn Andrea Lavazza Christoph Lehner Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Jules Lequyer Leucippus Michael Levin Joseph Levine George Henry Lewes C.I.Lewis David Lewis Peter Lipton C. Lloyd Morgan John Locke Michael Lockwood Arthur O. Lovejoy E. Jonathan Lowe John R. Lucas Lucretius Alasdair MacIntyre Ruth Barcan Marcus Tim Maudlin James Martineau Nicholas Maxwell Storrs McCall Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Brian McLaughlin John McTaggart Paul E. Meehl Uwe Meixner Alfred Mele Trenton Merricks John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Otto Neurath Friedrich Nietzsche John Norton P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor Parmenides David F. Pears Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Plato Karl Popper Porphyry Huw Price H.A.Prichard Protagoras Hilary Putnam Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Michael Rea Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher C.W.Rietdijk Richard Rorty Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle Jean-Paul Sartre Kenneth Sayre T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Wilfrid Sellars Alan Sidelle Ted Sider Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith Baruch Spinoza L. Susan Stebbing Isabelle Stengers George F. Stout Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Francisco Suárez Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Mark Twain Peter Unger Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin Voltaire G.H. von Wright David Foster Wallace R. Jay Wallace W.G.Ward Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford C.F. von Weizsäcker William Whewell Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Bernard Williams Timothy Williamson Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists David Albert Michael Arbib Walter Baade Bernard Baars Jeffrey Bada Leslie Ballentine Marcello Barbieri Gregory Bateson Horace Barlow John S. Bell Mara Beller Charles Bennett Ludwig von Bertalanffy Susan Blackmore Margaret Boden David Bohm Niels Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Emile Borel Max Born Satyendra Nath Bose Walther Bothe Jean Bricmont Hans Briegel Leon Brillouin Stephen Brush Henry Thomas Buckle S. H. Burbury Melvin Calvin Donald Campbell Sadi Carnot Anthony Cashmore Eric Chaisson Gregory Chaitin Jean-Pierre Changeux Rudolf Clausius Arthur Holly Compton John Conway Jerry Coyne John Cramer Francis Crick E. P. Culverwell Antonio Damasio Olivier Darrigol Charles Darwin Richard Dawkins Terrence Deacon Lüder Deecke Richard Dedekind Louis de Broglie Stanislas Dehaene Max Delbrück Abraham de Moivre Bernard d'Espagnat Paul Dirac Hans Driesch John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Gerald Edelman Paul Ehrenfest Manfred Eigen Albert Einstein George F. R. Ellis Hugh Everett, III Franz Exner Richard Feynman R. A. Fisher David Foster Joseph Fourier Philipp Frank Steven Frautschi Edward Fredkin Benjamin Gal-Or Howard Gardner Lila Gatlin Michael Gazzaniga Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen GianCarlo Ghirardi J. Willard Gibbs James J. Gibson Nicolas Gisin Paul Glimcher Thomas Gold A. O. Gomes Brian Goodwin Joshua Greene Dirk ter Haar Jacques Hadamard Mark Hadley Patrick Haggard J. B. S. Haldane Stuart Hameroff Augustin Hamon Sam Harris Ralph Hartley Hyman Hartman Jeff Hawkins John-Dylan Haynes Donald Hebb Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg John Herschel Basil Hiley Art Hobson Jesper Hoffmeyer Don Howard John H. Jackson William Stanley Jevons Roman Jakobson E. T. Jaynes Pascual Jordan Eric Kandel Ruth E. Kastner Stuart Kauffman Martin J. Klein William R. Klemm Christof Koch Simon Kochen Hans Kornhuber Stephen Kosslyn Daniel Koshland Ladislav Kovàč Leopold Kronecker Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace Karl Lashley David Layzer Joseph LeDoux Gerald Lettvin Gilbert Lewis Benjamin Libet David Lindley Seth Lloyd Werner Loewenstein Hendrik Lorentz Josef Loschmidt Alfred Lotka Ernst Mach Donald MacKay Henry Margenau Owen Maroney David Marr Humberto Maturana James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr John McCarthy Warren McCulloch N. David Mermin George Miller Stanley Miller Ulrich Mohrhoff Jacques Monod Vernon Mountcastle Emmy Noether Donald Norman Alexander Oparin Abraham Pais Howard Pattee Wolfgang Pauli Massimo Pauri Wilder Penfield Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Colin Pittendrigh Walter Pitts Max Planck Susan Pockett Henri Poincaré Daniel Pollen Ilya Prigogine Hans Primas Zenon Pylyshyn Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Nicolas Rashevsky Lord Rayleigh Frederick Reif Jürgen Renn Giacomo Rizzolati A.A. Roback Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle David Rumelhart Robert Sapolsky Tilman Sauer Ferdinand de Saussure Jürgen Schmidhuber Erwin Schrödinger Aaron Schurger Sebastian Seung Thomas Sebeok Franco Selleri Claude Shannon Charles Sherrington David Shiang Abner Shimony Herbert Simon Dean Keith Simonton Edmund Sinnott B. F. Skinner Lee Smolin Ray Solomonoff Roger Sperry John Stachel Henry Stapp Tom Stonier Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard Max Tegmark Teilhard de Chardin Libb Thims William Thomson (Kelvin) Richard Tolman Giulio Tononi Peter Tse Alan Turing C. S. Unnikrishnan Francisco Varela Vlatko Vedral Vladimir Vernadsky Mikhail Volkenstein Heinz von Foerster Richard von Mises John von Neumann Jakob von Uexküll C. H. Waddington John B. Watson Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg Paul A. Weiss Herman Weyl John Wheeler Jeffrey Wicken Wilhelm Wien Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson Günther Witzany Stephen Wolfram H. Dieter Zeh Semir Zeki Ernst Zermelo Wojciech Zurek Konrad Zuse Fritz Zwicky Presentations Biosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium |
Niels Bohr
Among all the major scientists of the twentieth century, Niels Bohr may have most wanted to be considered a philosopher. Bohr thought that his concept of complementarity, developed in the same weeks as Werner Heisenberg was formulating his uncertainty principle, could explain many great philosophical issues. Complementarity in the form of wave-particle duality lies at the core of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Over the years, Bohr suggested complementarity could illuminate the mind/body problem, it might provide for the difference between organic and inorganic matter, and it could underlie other classic dualisms like subject/object, reason versus passion, and even free volition versus deterministic causality.
Like any educated person of his time, Bohr knew of Kant's phenomemal/noumenal dualism. He often spoke as if the goal of complementarity was to reconcile opposites. He likened it to the eastern yin and yang, and his grave is marked with the yin/yang symbol.
Bohr was often criticized for suggesting that both A and Not-A could be the case. This was the characteristic sign of Georg W.F. Hegel's dialectical materialism. Had Bohr absorbed some Hegelian thinking? Another Hegelian trait was to speak indirectly and obscurely of the most important matters, and this was Bohr's way, to the chagrin of many of his disciples. They called it "obscure clarity." They hoped for clarity and but got mostly fuzzy thinking when Bohr stepped outside of his "old" quantum mechanics.
Bohr might very much have liked the current two-stage model for free will incorporating both randomness and an adequate statistical determinism. He could have seen it as a shining example of his complementarity.
As a philosopher, Bohr was a logical positivist, greatly influenced by Ernst Mach. He put severe epistemological limits on knowing the Kantian "things in themselves," just as Immanuel Kant had put limits on reason. The British empiricist philosophers John Locke and David Hume had put the "primary" objects beyond the reach of our "secondary" sensory perceptions. In this respect, Bohr shared the positivist views of many other empirical scientists, especially Mach.
Bohr seemed to deny the existence of an "objective reality," but clearly knew and said that the physical world is largely independent of human observations. In classical physics, the physical world is assumed to be completely independent of the act of observing the world.
Copenhageners were proud of their limited ability to know. Bohr said:
There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.Agreeing with many twentieth-century analytic language philosophers, Bohr and Heisenberg emphasized the importance of conventional language as a tool for knowledge. Since language evolved to describe the familiar world of "classical" objects in space and time, they insisted that somewhere between the quantum world and the classical world there must come a point when our observations and measurements can be expressible in classical concepts. They argued that a measurement apparatus and a particular observation must be describable classically in order for it to be understood and become knowledge in the mind of the observer. And controversially, they maintained that a measurement is not complete until it is knowledge in the mind of a "conscious observer." In quantum physics, Bohr and Heisenberg said that the result of an experiment depends on the free choice of the experimenter as to what to measure. The quantum world of photons and electrons might look like waves or look like particles depending on what we look for, rather than what they "are" as "things in themselves." The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says that physical reality does not actually have values for familiar physical variables like position and momentum until we decide to measure them. Einstein, by comparison, asked "Does the particle have a precise position the moment before it is measured?" The Copenhagen answer was sometimes "no," more often it was "we don't know," or "the question is meaningless."
Free Choice in Quantum Mechanics
"Free choice" is an important term in the debates about quantum mechanics and physical reality. It was introduced by Niels Bohr in his response to Albert Einstein's famous challenge to the "completeness" of quantum mechanics.
Einstein, with his Princeton colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, are said to have claimed in their article on what is now called the EPR paradox, that quantum mechanics requires the addition of further parameters or "hidden variables" to restore a deterministic picture of the "elements of reality."
In classical physics, such elements of reality include simultaneous values for the position and momentum of elementary particles like electrons.
In quantum mechanics, Bohr and Werner Heisenberg claimed that such properties could not be said to exist precisely before an experimenter decides to make a measurement.
This "freedom of choice" of the experimenter includes the freedom of which specific property to measure for. If the position is measured accurately, the (complementary conjugate and non-commuting variable) momentum is necessarily (sic) indeterminate.
Free Choice versus "Nature's Choice."
For example, if the observer orients a Stern-Gerlach device in a particular direction or angle, that choice of direction limits the outcomes of measurement to spin-up or spin-down in that chosen direction. But the observer cannot control the random outcomes of spin-up or spin-down. This randomness is what Paul Dirac called "Nature's choice."
In his 1938 essay on "The Causality Problem in Atomic Physics" Bohr again emphasizes the "free choice" of an experimental procedure in his solution to the EPR paradox.
the paradox finds its complete solution within the frame of the quantum mechanical formalism, according to which no well defined use of the concept of "state" can be made as referring to the object separate from the body with which it has been in contact, until the external conditions involved in the definition of this concept are unambiguously fixed by a further suitable control of the auxiliary body. Instead of disclosing any incompleteness of the formalism, the argument outlined entails in fact an unambiguous prescription as to how this formalism is rationally applied under all conceivable manipulations of the measuring instruments. The complete freedom of the procedure in experiments common to all investigations of physical phenomena, is in itself of course contained in our free choice of the experimental arrangement, which again is only dictated by the particular kind of phenomena we wish to investigate.
Free Choice versus "Nature's Choice."
To be sure, those quantum events that are "measured" in a physics experiment which is set up to measure a certain quantity are dependent on the experimenter and the design of the experiment. To measure the electron spin in a Stern-Gerlach experiment, for example, the experimenter is "free to choose" to measure, for example, the z-component of the spin, rather than the x- or y-component. This will influence (but not determine) quantum level events in the following ways:
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Δν Δt = 1.
A similar argument in space relates the physical size of a wave packet Δx to the variation in the number of waves per centimeter Δσ. σ is the so-called wave number = 1 / λ (the inverse of the wavelength):
Δσ Δx = 1.
If we multiply both sides of the above equations by Planck's constant h, and use the Planck/Einstein relation between energy and frequency E = hν (and the similar Einstein relation between momentum and wavelength p = hσ = h / λ), the above become the Heisenberg indeterminacy relations:
ΔE Δt = h, Δp Δx = h.
This must have dazzled and perhaps upset Heisenberg. Bohr had used only the abstract space and time properties of waves to derive Heisenberg's physical limits! Bohr was obviously impressed by the new de Broglie - Schrödinger wave mechanics. Could wave mechanics produce a theory that did not need Heisenberg's material interactions or Einstein's point-like particles of energy (now photons)?
Bohr was pleased that Schrödinger's wave function provided a "natural" explanation for the "quantum numbers" of the "stationary states" in his first quantum postulate. They are simply the nodes in the wave function. On the other hand, Schrödinger hoped to eliminate the "unnatural" quantum jumps in Bohr's second quantum postulate by resonances or singularities in the wave field.
Quantum mechanics requires a fundamental "indeterminacy" that is ontological, a characteristic of the wave function whether or not it is observed. The experimenter can get different results, depending on the choice of measurement apparatus and the property or attribute measured. EPR argued (mistakenly) that entangled particles could be regarded as separate systems (the indistinguishable particles are in fact described by an inseparable two-particle wave function), and since the experimenter can choose which type of measurement to make on the first system, it would make an instantaneous difference in the state and properties of the second system, however far away, without in any way "disturbing" the second system, but violating special relativity. We see therefore that, as a consequence of two different measurements performed upon the first system, the second system may be left in states with two different wave functions. On the other hand, since at the time of measurement the two systems no longer interact, no real change can take place in the second system in consequence of anything that may be done to the first system. This is, of course, merely a statement of what is meant by the absence of an interaction between the two systems. Thus, it is possible to assign two different wave functions to the same reality (the second system after the interaction with the first).In his 1935 reply to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, Bohr denied that the limitations on simultaneously measuring complementary properties implied any incompleteness: My main purpose in repeating these simple, and in substance well-known considerations, is to emphasize that in the phenomena concerned we are not dealing with an incomplete description characterized by the arbitrary picking out of different elements of physical reality at the cost of sacrificing other such elements, but with a rational discrimination between essentially different experimental arrangements and procedures which are suited either for an unambiguous use of the idea of space location or for a legitimate application of the conservation theorem of momentum.In his long 1938 essay on "The Causality Problem in Atomic Physics" Bohr again emphasizes the "free choice" of an experimental procedure in his solution to the EPR paradox. the paradox finds its complete solution within the frame of the quantum mechanical formalism, according to which no well defined use of the concept of "state" can be made as referring to the object separate from the body with which it has been in contact, until the external conditions involved in the definition of this concept are unambiguously fixed by a further suitable control of the auxiliary body. Instead of disclosing any incompleteness of the formalism, the argument outlined entails in fact an unambiguous prescription as to how this formalism is rationally applied under all conceivable manipulations of the measuring instruments. The complete freedom of the procedure in experiments common to all investigations of physical phenomena, is in itself of course contained in our free choice of the experimental arrangement, which again is only dictated by the particular kind of phenomena we wish to investigate.In all the recent EPR experiments to test Bell's Inequalities, "free choices" of the experimenters are needed when they select the angle of polarization. Note that what determines the second experimenter's results is these tests is simply the first experimenter's measurement, which instantaneously collapses the superposition of two-particle states into a particular state that is now a separable product of independent particle states. Bell inequality investigators who try to recover the "elements of local reality" that Einstein wanted, and who hope to eliminate the irreducible randomness of quantum mechanics that follows from wave functions as probability amplitudes, often cite "loopholes" in EPR experiments. For example, the "detection loophole" claims that the efficiency of detectors is so low that they are missing many events that might prove Einstein was right. Most all the loopholes have now been closed, but there is one loophole that can never be closed because of its metaphysical/philosophical nature. That is the "(pre-)determinism loophole." If every event occurs for reasons that were established at the beginning of the universe, then the experimenters lack any free will or free choice and all the careful experimental results are meaningless. John Conway and Simon Kochen have formalized this loophole in what they call the Free Will Theorem.
Bohr articles
Constitution of Atoms and Molecules I (1913).
Nobel Lecture (1922).
Bohr-Kramers-Slater (1927) PDF of B.L. Van der Waerden, Sources of Quantum Mechanics, 1967, pp.159-176.
Bohr's Como Lecture annotated (1927) PDF original.
The Quantum of Action and the Description
of Nature (1929).
The Atomic Theory and the Fundamental
Principles underlying the Description
of Nature (1929).
Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete ? (1935) PDF.
Causality and Complementarity (1937) PDF.
The Causality Problem in Atomic Physics (1938) PDF.
Discussion with Einstein, from Schilpp volume on Einstein, (1949) PDF.
Notions of Causality and Complementarity (1950) PDF.
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