Philosophy of Physics Graduate Lunch Seminar (Friday - Week 6, HT21)

philosophy of physics grad lunch seminar

Several advocates of Everettian Quantum Mechanics (EQM) maintain that upon coming to believe in EQM, rational agents can i) simply continue to act as before, maximising expected utility with respect to Born rule probabilities, and ii) continue to make the same ordinary assertions about the future. I call this the Minimal Impact Approach to EQM (MIA). Using the example of Wallace (2012), I argue that both of said claims are false. More precisely, I hold that Wallace’s derivation of the Born rule unjustifiably blocks plausible ways in which EQM might come to bear on rational deliberation, and that his defence of conservative semantics for Everettians rests on a misapplication of the interpretative Principle of Charity. I conclude that MIA should be abandoned.

 

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