Monday, July 16, 2018

Degrees of realness

Luciano Floridi has argued that our "reality is the totality of" our "information." (The Philosophy of Information, Oxford University Press, 2011, page xiii)  If we were to employ that definition of realness then not all things need be equally real. How real a concept is would depend upon how many models/theories it appears in, how important a role it plays,  and how strongly and how frequently that particular concept is activated during cognition. The quantum wave function, for example, is quite real in David Albert’s version of Bohmian quantum mechanics and not at all real in Bradley Monton's interpretation of quantum mechanics, when he says: "The wave function, according to Bell, is an inessential mathematical device...". (See The Wave Function, Oxford University Press, 2013, pages 108 and 162) Different definitions of what realness is would also have an impact.

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