Epistemic horizons from deterministic laws: lessons from a nomic toy theory.
Quantum theory has an epistemic horizon, i.e. exact values cannot be assigned simultaneously to incompatible physical quantities. As shown by Spekkens’ toy theory, positing an epistemic horizon akin to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in a classical mechanical setting also leads to a plethora of q...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 205; no. 4; pp. 1 - 39 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Apr2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=184294766&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 184294766 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2025 vid: 205 iid: 4 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 184294766 10.1007/s11229-024-04852-0 ppf: 1 ppct: 38 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 5.1MB tig: atl: Epistemic horizons from deterministic laws: lessons from a nomic toy theory. aug: au: Fankhauser, Johannes Gonda, Tomáš De les Coves, Gemma affil: https://ror.org/054pv6659 Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 21a, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria sug: keyword: Deterministic laws Epistemic horizons Predictability Quantum uncertainty principles Spekkens’ toy theory Spekkens' toy theory Subject-object inseparability ab: Quantum theory has an epistemic horizon, i.e. exact values cannot be assigned simultaneously to incompatible physical quantities. As shown by Spekkens’ toy theory, positing an epistemic horizon akin to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in a classical mechanical setting also leads to a plethora of quantum phenomena. We introduce a deterministic theory—nomic toy theory—in which information gathering agents are explicitly modelled as physical systems. Our main result shows the presence of an epistemic horizon for such agents. They can only simultaneously learn the values of observables whose Poisson bracket vanishes. Therefore, nomic toy theory has incompatible measurements and the complete state of a physical system cannot be known. The best description of a system by an agent is via an epistemic state of Spekkens’ toy theory. Our result reconciles us to measurement uncertainty as an aspect of the inseparability of subjects and objects. Significantly, the claims follow even though nomic toy theory is essentially classical. This work invites further investigations of epistemic horizons, such as the one of (full) quantum theory. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2025. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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