Distinguishing Between Metaphysical and Epistemological Randomness

Zulena dos S. Silva

This paper will present questions from three perspectives about Quantum Mechanics (QM): physics, epistemological, and metaphysical.The quantum phenomena do not fit with the parameters of classical physics, so a daily intuition on macroscopic world is dispensable when it is the quantum object investigated.This physical domain induces a new thinking, which requires also new concepts to describe such object.The QM is disturbing and stimulates epistemological reflections, as the issues of access about what is known; and metaphysical theme are not to be left behind with regard to QM: What would the quantum object to?What is apprehended when this object is perceived, once considered the disturbing characteristics that constitute its physical description: interference and non-separability?What is its nature?This paper focuses briefly on the analysis of B. d'Espagnat in Veiled Reality, which would represent the physical perspective of QT; for epistemological questions, one will resort to the Kantian conception of knowledge; and with regard to the metaphysical perspective, we will rely on an article by Professor J. B. Arenhart.It is necessary to note that the question that pervades in this paper is about if the experience in QM is built.Thus, we will try to seek clarity on the philosophical issues through QT, regarding the problems about the possibility of knowledge of the quantum object and its nature, and whether experience in this case is built.But furthermore, the QM instigates us to think whether metaphysics proceeds on the investigation of nature when it comes to the QM.And such a question is more than to have as problem as the scope of the description of physical data, but rather whether it makes sense or whether metaphysical research is pertinent to the QM.

Arkady Plotnitsky

Tomasz Bigaj

Bartosz Wesół

This essay aims to show that the recent development of quantum theory may provide us with an answer to one of the most compelling metaphysical problems, namely the problem of determinism.First, I sketch the conceptual background and draw the distinction between metaphysical and epistemological determinisms.Then, on the ground of the analysis of the problem of determinism in quantum mechanics, I argue that (1) metaphysical determinism is independent of quantum-mechanical formalism, and (2) that quantum nonlocality makes epistemological determinism impossible.I also try to show that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as a Kantian regulative idea which sets the horizon for scientific inquiry but which at the same time lacks what Kant calls "objective validity."The main conclusion is that metaphysical determinism should be regarded as an idealization -a formal, cognitive principle that we a priori assume and not something that we discover through scientific inquiry.

changzheng zhou, ZIQING zhou

This paper aims to provide a systematic meta-theoretical framework for the”Quantum Geometrization” research program. From an epistemological perspective, it clarifies that establishing ”information” as the first principle of physics isnot an arbitrary metaphysical presupposition, but is based on two operationallymeaningful meta-rules: conservation of information distinguishability and finitestep computability of physical processes. This paper argues that these two metarules constitute the boundary conditions that any cognizable and testable physicaltheory must satisfy, and together they define the ”operational window of physicalcognition”. Within this framework, spacetime geometry is interpreted as an emergent phenomenon of information structure in the coarse-graining limit, quantumuncertainty is reinterpreted as an inevitable trade-off between levels of information description, and a series of cosmological parameters are traced back to rigidconstraints of information algebra. This paper further synthesizes the core achievements of the Quantum Geometrization series into a unified ”information dynamics”prediction network, and discusses the framework’s scope of applicability, challenges,and future directions. This study provides an epistemological foundation for thecore proposition ”spacetime emerges from information” and places the QuantumGeometrization program within a falsifiable scientific paradigm.

J. W. Fowler