Higher seminar in the Philosophy of Science: Sorin Bangu (Bergen)

Seminar

Date: Thursday 18 November 2021

Time: 13.15 – 15.00

Location: D700

Noncausal Explanations in Physics

Abstract

Are there noncausal explanations in physics? Can there be? I answer both these questions affirmatively. I first present a general strategy to argue that certain answers to certain kinds of why-questions deserve to be called explanations, and that they naturally qualify to be called noncausal. I then show that a family of examples from quantum mechanics illustrates this type of explanation.