Within the metaphysical project, the debate concerns the question what the fundamental grounds for the asymmetry of radiation phenomena are: is the asymmetry an expression of a fundamental causal asymmetry or is it due to an asymmetry between prevailing initial and final conditions? Neo-Russellians, by contrast, deny that causal notions and causal explanation can play any role in suitably fundamental theories of physics. By contrast, Glymour (2006) argues that instead of giving up faithfulness, we ought to reject the Markov condition in quantum contexts. One might want to conclude from the fact that quantum correlations are incompatible with the conjunction of faithfulness and the Markov condition that causal notions are inapplicable in the quantum realm. Yet there are also arguments suggesting that faithfulness cannot be a necessary condition on causal models (Cartwright 2001). Paradigmatic cases of violations of faithfulness involve cancelations among different causal paths, as they occur in feedback-control structures.
The two experiments are performed independently but can have outcomes that can be correlated in ways that are not readily accounted for by classical causal models. Thus, at least one of the two conditions-faithfulness or the Markov condition-has to be given up. If we want to accept the quantum mechanical predictions, which appear to be empirically well-confirmed, we have to reject at least one of the postulates. By contrast, Wood and Spekkens show that if we hold on to the Markov condition, then violations of faithfulness have to be a generic feature of quantum causal systems that violate the Bell inequalities. That is, the explanation does enable us to answer what Woodward calls what-if-things-had-been-different questions (Woodward 1979), which, according to Woodward’s account of explanation is an important feature of causal explanations. Earlier defenders of causal accounts of explanation took one distinguishing feature of causal accounts to be their metaphysical, or-as Alberto Coffa called it-ontic conception of explanation. From a functionalist perspective, defenders of a causal picture and defenders of a probabilistic account can be understood as emphasizing two different aspects that both are integral features of causal models: an initial independence assumption and directed causal relationships among variables.
Indeed, the fact that the value of the heat capacity of metals follows from structural features of the electrons’ phase space and is not something that, even in principle, is open to manipulation or control arguably is itself explanatorily relevant. For example, ambient temperature is causally relevant to human body temperature, even though body temperature is probabilistically independent of ambient temperature over a wide range of ambient temperatures, since the human body responds to changes in ambient temperatures through various mechanisms along different causal routes, which are fine-tuned in a way that allow the body to maintain a constant core temperature. Likewise if we know a stars size and temperature we can gain an understanding of the equation of state. To the extent that microscopic charged particles can be (and in fact are) modeled classically, their interactions with fields are modeled as exhibiting temporal asymmetries just as macroscopic field sources do (Jackson 1999). These asymmetries include the fact that accelerating microscopic charged particles are damped (since they radiate off part of the energy they receive), rather than being anti-damped (extracting additional energy from the surrounding field) (Rohrlich 2007). Thus, whatever the correct account of the asymmetry of radiation is, it has to apply to microscopic charged particles as well as to macroscopic collections of charges.
The fact someone has a potentially falsifiable theory doesn't excite me if I feel sure their hypothesis is false. Hence all explanations are causal in virtue of the fact that they provide information about this structure, even though the information provided in an actual explanation may not be presented in causal terms. If some men do not have our experiences, even when our experiences coincide with those of others, that suggests that the former are blind to religious realities- just as a man's inability to see colors does not show that many of us who claim to see them are mistaken, only that he is color blind. But currently I can't see any reason to suppose hedonic tone (or the taste of garlic) could be instantiated in inorganic quantum computers. It is often argued that quantum mechanics is particularly inhospitable to causal notions. Early discussions of a putative tension between causal notions and quantum mechanics focused mainly on the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. More recent discussions by contrast, focus on the problem that nonlocal quantum correlations violate Bell inequalities as presenting a challenge to causal analyses.
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