The Possibility of the Extraordinary
Many pages have been written during the last few decades to shed some light on the question of what Quantum Mechanics is trying to tell us, I will say a few words on what I think the Pondicherry Interpretation of QM (a.k.a. PIQM) is trying to tell us. There is one concept that embraces the key metaphysical issues at stake, and that is the fundamental claim that space cannot be considered an “infinitely and intrinsically differentiated manifold”. There are many lectures and more than one implication that can be extracted from this idea; it deserves to be analyzed separately. I would rather take a different approach for this succinct conclusion. What the PIQM has come to confirm is why (with one exception) there are no extraordinary macroscopic events in nature, in the specific sense that, in a non-relativistic world, there are no events which contradict the laws of classical physics. Here, what I call “the extraordinary” is an extreme case of what Lewis calls a “tiny miracle” [1979, p.468]. Local miracles happen whenever there is a small violation of a deterministic law. One may think that after arguing that the PIQM was a realist interpretation (Section II), it is not completely unwarranted to defend now that the PIQM also has a word in favor of determinism [1], at least in some sense.
Whenever we see there is a relation between some types of events which can be explained in terms of regularities, we are inclined to express those regularities in the mathematical formalism of a scientific theory. In that way we are be able to make predictions about their occurrence. But even in the case when there is no predictive theory capable of giving a correct account of those events (think for example on the stochastic movement), there is no reason to consider them extraordinary in any real sense. I know there is no theory capable of modeling the fall of that dead leaf on my garden path, and I do not think too much about that in any case because I have reasons to believe in a common succession of events which ended up with the leaf on the floor. Would I be thinking the same if the leaf were to stay suspended in the air for five minutes? I certainly would, because I also know that nature can only accommodate ordinary events.
Let us imagine that there is a certain theory T which can, under certain conditions, predict within a limit of precision the leaf trajectory. In that case, if I were told that there is, let’s say, a 10% chance that the leaf will linger in the air for five minutes I would think that an extraordinary possibility, in the sense that it violates, counterfactually, a future state of events predicted by T. Extraordinary events can only have a meaning in terms of counterfactuals ─ by definition, that is the only thing that makes them extraordinary, i.e. they contradict the predictions of a deterministic theory. In that sense, the occurrence of anything unordinary in our day to day lives is unprecedented, or at least there are no records that indicate anything extraordinary ever happened. All events we see in nature are ordinary events. That same account but in the quantum domain is slightly different. We can consider some events, even taking into the equation the whole history of facts that preceded them, as unpredictable and fuzzy, but this only makes them extraordinary in the classical sense of the term. As quantum events, as we have seen, they are the manifestation of an objective probability. For this reason, we should not qualify them in any other way as simple and pure events. But there is room for another observation, the possibility of the extraordinary in our day to day lives, is far from being negligible.
The reason for this is that determinism, according to the PIQM, cannot be introduced a priori as an absolute scheme for the macroscopic world. Determinism is the physical manifestation of the sharpest positions we have access to (we call those positions intrinsic), and is conditional on the unreality of a world that is more differentiated than the space and time we experience. This is all the PIQM has to say in favor of determinism, but is quite fundamental. There is still the question whether such an imaginary world, a world of extrinsic macroscopic properties, though not actual at this particular region of space and time, may have a role to play in nature as a whole and, why not, in the configuration of reality. In the same way we have learnt that men and knowledge are not moved by any concrete vision of the extraordinary, they are moved by its uncertain possibility.
Adrian Icazuriaga
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[1] In what follows, by “determinism” I mean that given a certain set of initial conditions there is a unique future (or past) state of the system at any time, and that state has specific, real values, for the main properties of the system (even if we do not have access to those values).
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Many pages have been written during the last few decades to shed some light on the question of what Quantum Mechanics is trying to tell us, I will say a few words on what I think the Pondicherry Interpretation of QM (a.k.a. PIQM) is trying to tell us. There is one concept that embraces the key metaphysical issues at stake, and that is the fundamental claim that space cannot be considered an “infinitely and intrinsically differentiated manifold”. There are many lectures and more than one implication that can be extracted from this idea; it deserves to be analyzed separately. I would rather take a different approach for this succinct conclusion. What the PIQM has come to confirm is why (with one exception) there are no extraordinary macroscopic events in nature, in the specific sense that, in a non-relativistic world, there are no events which contradict the laws of classical physics. Here, what I call “the extraordinary” is an extreme case of what Lewis calls a “tiny miracle” [1979, p.468]. Local miracles happen whenever there is a small violation of a deterministic law. One may think that after arguing that the PIQM was a realist interpretation (Section II), it is not completely unwarranted to defend now that the PIQM also has a word in favor of determinism [1], at least in some sense.
Whenever we see there is a relation between some types of events which can be explained in terms of regularities, we are inclined to express those regularities in the mathematical formalism of a scientific theory. In that way we are be able to make predictions about their occurrence. But even in the case when there is no predictive theory capable of giving a correct account of those events (think for example on the stochastic movement), there is no reason to consider them extraordinary in any real sense. I know there is no theory capable of modeling the fall of that dead leaf on my garden path, and I do not think too much about that in any case because I have reasons to believe in a common succession of events which ended up with the leaf on the floor. Would I be thinking the same if the leaf were to stay suspended in the air for five minutes? I certainly would, because I also know that nature can only accommodate ordinary events.
Let us imagine that there is a certain theory T which can, under certain conditions, predict within a limit of precision the leaf trajectory. In that case, if I were told that there is, let’s say, a 10% chance that the leaf will linger in the air for five minutes I would think that an extraordinary possibility, in the sense that it violates, counterfactually, a future state of events predicted by T. Extraordinary events can only have a meaning in terms of counterfactuals ─ by definition, that is the only thing that makes them extraordinary, i.e. they contradict the predictions of a deterministic theory. In that sense, the occurrence of anything unordinary in our day to day lives is unprecedented, or at least there are no records that indicate anything extraordinary ever happened. All events we see in nature are ordinary events. That same account but in the quantum domain is slightly different. We can consider some events, even taking into the equation the whole history of facts that preceded them, as unpredictable and fuzzy, but this only makes them extraordinary in the classical sense of the term. As quantum events, as we have seen, they are the manifestation of an objective probability. For this reason, we should not qualify them in any other way as simple and pure events. But there is room for another observation, the possibility of the extraordinary in our day to day lives, is far from being negligible.
The reason for this is that determinism, according to the PIQM, cannot be introduced a priori as an absolute scheme for the macroscopic world. Determinism is the physical manifestation of the sharpest positions we have access to (we call those positions intrinsic), and is conditional on the unreality of a world that is more differentiated than the space and time we experience. This is all the PIQM has to say in favor of determinism, but is quite fundamental. There is still the question whether such an imaginary world, a world of extrinsic macroscopic properties, though not actual at this particular region of space and time, may have a role to play in nature as a whole and, why not, in the configuration of reality. In the same way we have learnt that men and knowledge are not moved by any concrete vision of the extraordinary, they are moved by its uncertain possibility.
Adrian Icazuriaga
--------------------------
[1] In what follows, by “determinism” I mean that given a certain set of initial conditions there is a unique future (or past) state of the system at any time, and that state has specific, real values, for the main properties of the system (even if we do not have access to those values).
