Isolation, not locality
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Authors
Colleges, School and Institutes
External organisations
- University of Colorado
Abstract
There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi-) isolation of causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place.
Details
Original language | English |
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Journal | Philosophy and Phenomenological Research |
Early online date | 28 Sep 2020 |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 28 Sep 2020 |
Keywords
- Philosophy of physics, locality, physics, philosophy of science