The FraMEPhys project hosted a workshop on Metaphysics of Quantum Theory on Monday 3 October 2022, at the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus.

If you have any queries about this event, please email f.longworth@bham.ac.uk.

SPEAKERS

Alexander Franklin (King’s College London)

Vera Matarese (University of Bern)

John Murphy (University of Birmingham)

Joshua Quirke (University of Birmingham)

Alastair Wilson (University of Birmingham)

SCHEDULE

Monday 3 October

10.00-11.00: John Murphy
“Branch Counting as a Route to Everettian Probability”

11.15 -12.15: Joshua Quirke
“World Number in Everettian Quantum Mechanics”

13.30 -14.30: Alastair Wilson
“Quantum Interventions”

14.45 -15.45: Vera Matarese
“Scientifically-informed metaphysics for the EPRB-quantum correlation: why there is no room for radical metaphysical hypotheses”

16.00-17.00: Alexander Franklin
“Incoherent? No, Just Decoherent: How Quantum Many Worlds Emerge”

ABSTRACTS

Alexander Franklin (King’s College London)
“Incoherent? No, Just Decoherent: How Quantum Many Worlds Emerge”
The modern Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics describes an emergent multiverse. The goal of this talk is to provide a perspicuous characterisation of how the multiverse emerges making use of a recent account of (weak) ontological emergence. This will be cashed out with a case study that identifies decoherence as the mechanism for emergence. The greater metaphysical clarity enables the rebuttal of critiques from Maudlin (2010), Monton (2013), and Dawid and Thébault (2015) that cast the emergent multiverse ontology as incoherent or empirically ungrounded.