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EPR As A Priori Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James Robert Brown
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Extract

Contemporary empiricism is closely allied with naturalism. Not only do empiricists hold that all our knowledge is based upon sensory experience, but they also tend to offer some sort of causal account of how this experience comes about. The causal ingredient in knowledge seems very plausible — after all, my knowing that there is a tea cup on my desk is based on sense impressions which are caused by the cup itself. Photons come from the cup to my eye; a signal is then sent down the optic nerve into the visual part of the brain, and so on. And without that causal process, I likely wouldn't have the knowledge that I do have.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 18: Return of the a priori , 1992 , pp. 253 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 A representative example can be found in the volume edited by Kornblith, HilaryNaturalizing Epistemology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1985).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Benacerraf, P. ‘Mathematical Truth,’ reprinted in Benacerraf, and Putnam, eds., Philosophy of Mathematics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983);Google Scholar

3 An earlier version of the argument to follow was first briefly given in my ‘π in the sky’ in Irvine, A. ed., Physicalism in Mathematics (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989) and repeated in my book, The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences (London & New York: Routledge 1991).Google Scholar I have changed my view on some key aspects of the argument, and in some respects I present the whole in greater detail here.

4 For a thorough account of early interpretations of QM (as well as present-day ones) see Jammer, M.The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics (New York: Wylie 1974).Google Scholar

5 Heisenberg, W.Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row 1958), 45Google Scholar

6 Einstein, A.Podolsky, B. and Rosen, N. ‘Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Reality Be Considered Complete?’ Physical Review (1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Aspect, A. et al., ‘Experimental Tests of Realistic Theories via Bell’s Theorem,’ Physical Review Letters 47 (1981) 460-3;CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell’s Inequalities,’ Physical Review Letters 49 (1982); ‘Experimental Test of Bell’s Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers,’ Physical Review Letters 49 (1982)

8 For a spectrum of views on this issue see Pappas, G. and Swain, M. eds., Knowledge and Justified Belief (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1978).Google Scholar

9 It’s tempting to appeal to Aristotle’s notion of a formal cause -but I will resist, since it is not at all clear how an Aristotelian form could cause a knower to know that some particular has the relevant property which it does have in virtue of the formal cause.

10 Gödel, K. ‘Russell’s Mathematical Logic’ and ‘What Is Cantor’s Continuum Problem?’ reprinted in Benacerraf, and Putnam, eds., Philosophy of Mathematics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1983)Google Scholar

11 Armstrong, D.What is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1983)Google Scholar, Dretske, F. ‘Laws of Nature,’ Philosophy of Science 44 (1977), and Tooley, M. ‘The Nature of Laws,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977)Google Scholar

12 Ayer, A.J. for example, does this in his famous chapter on the a priori in Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Penguin 1971).Google Scholar

13 Galileo, Discourse on Two New Sciences, trans. S. Drake (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press 1974), 66f.Google Scholar

14 For a detailed defense of the a priori character of this thought experiment, and for a discussion of thought experiments in general, see my The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences (London: Routledge 1991).

15 The editors, B. Hunter and P. Hanson and one of their readers, provided me with extensive useful comments, for which I am very grateful; I wish to thank SSHRC for its generous support.