Development of the Causal Interpretation

Chris Talbot

Tomasz Placek

The possibility question concerns the status of possibilities: do they form an irreducible category of the external reality, or are they merely features of our cognitive framework? If fundamental physics is ever to shed light on this issue, it must be done by some future theory that unifies insights of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The paper investigates one programme of this kind, namely the causal sets programme, as it apparently considers alternative developments of a given system. To evaluate this claim, we prove some algebraic facts about the sequential growth of causal sets. These facts tell against alternative developments, given that causal sets are understood as particular events. We thus interpret causal sets as multi-realisable objects, like states. This interpretation, however, is undermined by an argument for the probabilistic constraint of general covariance, as it says that multiple paths along which a causal set is produced are not physically different.

Emmanuel E. Haven

In the so called ‘causal’ interpretation of quantum mechanics, an electron is considered as a particle and such particle is influenced not only by a classical but also by a so called quantum potential. This idea was developed by Professor Bohm in an important paper. In this paper we use some of the basics of this interpretation in a financial option pricing environment. The causal interpretation allows for trajectories. Path breaking work by Professors Bohm and Hiley and Khrennikov and Choustova have made that the causal interpretation is a step closer to potential applications in social science. In this paper we consider the wave function as a wave of information. We consider the gradient of the phase of this wave function and show how the option price could be influenced by this gradient.

B. F. McGuinness, Friedrich Waismann

Marij van Strien

Abstract Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has generally been received as an attempt to restore the determinism of classical physics. However, although this interpretation, as Bohm initially proposed it in 1952, does indeed have the feature of being deterministic, for Bohm this was never the main point. In fact, in other publications and in correspondence from this period, he argued that the assumption that nature is deterministic is unjustified and should be abandoned. Whereas it has been argued before that Bohm’s commitment to determinism was connected to his interest in Marxism, I argue for the opposite: Bohm found resources in Marxist philosophy for developing a non-deterministic notion of causality, which is based on the idea of infinite complexity and an infinite number of levels of nature. From ca. 1954 onwards, Bohm’s conception of causality further weakened, as he developed the idea of a dialectical relation between causality and chance.

Simon Friederich