Is the end in sight for theoretical pseudophysics?
(December 2004)Abstract
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism
of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for
this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by
which the visual world is constructed by our minds, predispose us towards
concepts of space, time, and substance that are inconsistent with the
spatiotemporal and substantial aspects of the quantum world. In the first part
of this chapter, the latter are extracted from the quantum formalism. The
nature of a world that is fundamentally and irreducibly described by a
probability algorithm is determined. The neurobiological processes responsible
for the mismatch between our "natural" concepts of space, time, and substance
and the corresponding aspects of the quantum world are discussed in the second
part. These natural concepts give rise to pseudoproblems that foil our attempts
to make ontological sense of quantum mechanics. If certain psychologically
motivated but physically unwarranted assumptions are discarded (in particular
our dogged insistence on obtruding upon the quantum world the intrinsically and
completely differentiated spatiotemporal background of classical physics), we
are in a position to see why our fundamental physical theory is a probability
algorithm, and to solve the remaining interpretational problems.
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