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On What Being a World Takes Away

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Rob Clifton
Rob Clifton*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Abstract

In their article “On What It Takes To Be a World”, David Albert and Jeffrey Barrett raise “a rather urgent question about what the proponents of a many-worlds interpretation [of quantum mechanics] can possibly mean by the term ‘worlds’” (1995, 35). I argue that their considerations do not translate into an argument against the Many-Worlds conception of a world unless one requires that the dispositions that measurement devices display through the outcomes they record be explainable in terms of facts particular to the worlds in which those devices do their recording. Granting that their conception of a world takes away the possibility of such an explanation, a Many-Worlds proponent can claim that the Universal quantum state, which does not represent a fact about any world in particular, is enough to ground the dispositions of measurement devices.

Type
Philosophical Issues in Quantum Theory
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1996. , 1996 , pp. S151 - S158
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1996

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Jeff Barrett, Francisco Flores, and Kent Peacock for helpful discussion.

‡

Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7.

References

Albert, D. and Barrett, J. (1995), “On What It Takes To Be a World”, Topoi 14: 35–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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