The Quantum World in the Counterfactual Perspective: A Reply to Witold Strawiński

• Authors: Tomasz Bigaj

Title variants

PL

Świat kwantowy w ujęciu kontrfaktycznym: odpowiedź Witoldowi Strawińskiemu

EN

The Quantum World in the Counterfactual Perspective: A Reply to Witold Strawiński

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

This is a response to a critical review of my book Non-locality and Possible Worlds (Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt 2006) by Witold Strawiński. I present arguments why counterfactual conditionals are needed in the description of quantum-mechanical phenomena, and in particular in the analysis of the condition of locality. I rebut arguments against my choice of the relation of similarity between possible worlds offered by W. Strawiński and M. Dickson. In the later part of the article I address some other issues raised by my critics, such as the problem of the truth value of the antecedents of true counterfactuals, the problem of the semantic relation between sentences and events, and various shortcomings of my formulations of the condition of locality. In my response to the specific criticism of the definition of free-choice events, I agree with the charge that my definition is satisfied by all actual events. I present a correction to the definition which uses the distinction between actual events and merely possible events.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski. Wydział Filozofii
• Journal: Filozofia Nauki
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 101-115

Dates

published

2008-03-01

Contributors

author

Tomasz Bigaj