On determinism, realism, non-locality and free will

Peter Gibbins

Brian Ellis

This chapter develops metaphysics to include quantum mechanical realism. Quantum mechanics has always been the main obstacle to acceptance of scientific realism, and hence to any metaphysics based on scientific realism. Realism about Schrdinger waves requires the belief that particles are always transmitted as quantum mechanically indeterminate waves, but always act as classically determinate particles on whatever absorbs them. Acceptance of a realistic theory of Schrdinger waves, and of the very rapid or instantaneous changes of state that quantum theory implies, commits one to the view that all transitions from indeterminate to determinate states are temporally irreversible, apparently in contradiction to the widely accepted T-symmetry thesis. Realism about Schrdinger waves already implies a kind of non-locality, because what was spatially distributed before the event of determination suddenly becomes localized in that event. Quantum realism implies that there is a common species of elementary physical causation that is probabilistic, and directed from one determinate state of affairs to another.

Henry Margenau

Jeffrey Bub

B. Christensen, Kevin McCusker, Joseph B. Altepeter +8 more

Using a high-quality source of non-maximal polarization entanglement, optimized filters and collection optics, and ultra-high efficiency photon counters, we have performed what we believe is the first truly detection-loophole-free test of nonlocality with photons.

Michael L. G. Redhead