College of Arts & Humanities
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1611
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information Theory(2009) Van Camp, Wesley W.; Bub, Jeffrey; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The principle aim of this dissertation is to investigate the philosophical application of quantum information theory to interpretational issues regarding the theory of quantum mechanics. Recently, quantum information theory has emerged as a potential source for such an interpretation. The main question with which this dissertation will be concerned is whether or not an information-theoretic interpretation can serve as a conceptually acceptable interpretation of quantum mechanics. It will be argued that some of the more obvious approaches - that quantum information theory shows us that ultimately the world is made of information, and quantum Bayesianism - fail as philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. However, the information-theoretic approach of Clifton, Bub, and Halvorson introduces Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories, arguing that quantum mechanics is best understood as an information-theoretic principle theory. While I argue that this particular approach fails, it does offer a viable new philosophical role for information theory. Specifically, an investigation of interpretationally successful principle theories such as Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and general relativity, shows that the particular principles employed are necessary as constitutive elements of a framework which partially defines the basic explanatory concepts of space, time, and motion. Without such constitutive principles as preconditions for empirical meaning, scientific progress is hampered. It is argued that the philosophical issues in quantum mechanics stem from an analogous conceptual crisis. On the basis of this comparison, the best strategy for resolving these problems is to apply a similar sort of conceptual analysis to quantum mechanics so as to provide an appropriate set of constitutive principles clarifying the conceptual issues at stake. It is further argued that quantum information theory is ideally placed as a novel conceptual framework from which to conduct this analysis.Item Thermodynamics, Reversibility and Jaynes' Approach to Statistical Mechanics(2006-07-25) Parker, Daniel; Bub, Jeffrey; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation contests David Albert's recent arguments that the proposition that the universe began in a particularly low entropy state (the "past hypothesis") is necessary and sufficient to ground the thermodynamic asymmetry against the reversibility objection, which states that the entropy of thermodynamic systems was previously larger than it is now. In turn, it argues that this undermines Albert's suggestion that the past hypothesis can underwrite other temporal asymmetries such as those of records and causation. This thesis thus concerns the broader philosophical problem of understanding the interrelationships among the various temporal asymmetries that we find in the world, such as those of thermodynamic phenomena, causation, human agency and inference. The position argued for is that the thermodynamic asymmetry is nothing more than an inferential asymmetry, reflecting a distinction between the inferences made towards the past and the future. As such, it cannot be used to derive a genuine physical asymmetry. At most, an inferential asymmetry can provide evidence for an asymmetry not itself forthcoming from the formalism of statistical mechanics. The approach offered here utilises an epistemic, information-theoretic interpretation of thermodynamics applied to individual "branch" systems in order to ground irreversible thermodynamic behaviour (Branch systems are thermodynamic systems quasi-isolated from their environments for short periods of time). I argue that such an interpretation solves the reversibility objection by treating thermodynamics as part of a more general theory of statistical inference supported by information theory and developed in the context of thermodynamics by E.T. Jaynes. It is maintained that by using an epistemic interpretation of probability (where the probabilities reflect one's knowledge about a thermodynamic system rather than a property of the system itself), the reversibility objection can be disarmed by severing the link between the actual history of a thermodynamic system and its statistical mechanical description. Further, novel and independent arguments to ground the veracity of records in the face of the reversibility objection are developed. Additionally, it is argued that the information-theoretic approach offered here provides a clearer picture of the reduction of the thermodynamic entropy to its statistical mechanical basis than other extant proposals.