Entanglement, Complexity, and Causal Asymmetry in Quantum Theories

Williams, Porter

doi:10.1007/s10701-022-00562-0

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…15 In fact, I think one philosophical consequence of the methods for inferring causal direction discussed in (Woodward, 2022) is to pose yet another difficulty for such approaches. By employing statistical independence conditions like CSI and VRI, one can ground a causal asymmetry between states of classical or quantum systems related by time-symmetric dynamical laws (Janzing et al, 2016;Williams, 2022). As illustrated above, there is nothing necessarily emergent or non-fundamental about these statistical asymmetries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is sufficient to account for all "fundamental" dynamical evolutions of classical mechanics and for unitary evolution in quantum theories. For simplicity I will stick to the context of classical statistical mechanics, but see (Williams, 2022) for discussion of how some of the themes here apply to quantum states related by unitary dynamical evolution.…”

Section: Reversing Timementioning

confidence: 99%

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The fate of causal structure under time reversal

Williams

2022

THEORIA

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What happens to the causal structure of a world when time is reversed? At first glance it seems there are two possible answers: the causal relations are reversed, or they are not. I argue that neither of these answers is correct: we should either deny that time-reversed worlds have causal relations at all, or deny that causal concepts developed in the actual world are reliable guides to the causal structure of time-reversed worlds. The first option is motivated by the instability of time-reversed dynamical evolutions under interventions. The second option is motivated by a recognition of how contingent structural features of the actual world shape our causal concepts and reasoning strategies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reversing Timementioning

confidence: 99%

The fate of causal structure under time reversal

Williams

2022

THEORIA

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“…22 The principle of independent mechanisms is also universally assumed to hold in physics and has been put to use in classical and quantum physics for multiple purposes (e.g., Maudlin, 2007, pp. 130-35;Janzing et al, 2016;Williams, 2022a).…”

Section: Relevance Of Physicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Worldly Infrastructure of Causation

Weinberger,

Williams,

Woodward

2024

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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This paper describes an alternative to currently dominant philosophical approaches to the metaphysics of causation. It is motivated by the gap that currently exists between metaphysical accounts and recent epistemological research on causal reasoning and methods for discovering causal relationships.Our approach aims at characterizing structural features of the actual world that support, and are exploited by, successful strategies for causal reasoning and discovery. We call these features the "worldly infrastructure" of causation.We identify several elements of this worldly infrastructure, sketch an account of their physical bases, and explain how they contribute to the possibility of successful causal reasoning.

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A scale-free universal relational information matrix (N-space) reconciles the information problem: N-space as the fabric of reality

Miller

2023

Communicative & Integrative Biology

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Entanglement, Complexity, and Causal Asymmetry in Quantum Theories

Cited by 3 publications

References 85 publications

The fate of causal structure under time reversal

The fate of causal structure under time reversal

The Worldly Infrastructure of Causation

A scale-free universal relational information matrix (N-space) reconciles the information problem: N-space as the fabric of reality

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