Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 8, MT20)

The violation of Bell inequalities seems to establish an important fact about the world: that it is non-local. However, this result relies on the assumption of the statistical independence of the measurement settings with respect to potential past events that might have determined them. Superdeterminism refers to the view that a local, and determinist, account of Bell inequalities violations is possible, by rejecting this assumption of statistical independence. I will examine and clarify various problems with superdeterminism, looking in particular at its consequences on the nature of scientific laws and scientific reasoning. I will argue that the view requires a neo-Humean account at least of some laws, and creates a significant problem for the use of statistical independence in other parts of physics and science more generally. (Joint work with Augustin Baas.)

The Seminar is going to be held via Microsoft teams. Please email James Read if you would like to attend.