The development of the logic of partitions (dual to the usual Boolean logic of subsets) and logical information theory bring out a fundamental duality between existence (e.g., elements of a subset) and information (e.g., distinctions of a partition). This leads in a more meta-physical vein to two different conceptions of reality, one of which provides the realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Partition Logic talk slides Ljubljana
September 23, 2015 by
Slides from talk on Partition Logic at University of Ljubljana Sept. 8, 2015.
On the Objective Indefiniteness Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
August 28, 2015 by
Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two different meta-physical conceptions of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality “all the way down,” and the quantum conception of an objectively indefinite type of reality. Part of the problem of interpreting quantum mechanics (QM) is the problem of making sense out of an objectively indefinite reality. Our sense-making strategy is to follow the math by showing that the mathematical way to describe indefiniteness is by partitions (quotient sets or equivalence relations).
1991 clippings on work in Slovenia
July 16, 2015 by
Here are a few newspaper and magazine clippings from my efforts in Slovenia in 1990-91 to get a worker-ownership privatization law drafted and passed.
Mac Lane, Bourbaki, and Adjoints Redux
June 16, 2015 by
Saunders Mac Lane famously said that Bourbaki (in the person of Pierre Samuel) “just missed” developing the notion of an adjunction in 1948 a decade before Daniel Kan. When adjoints are defined using heteromorphisms or chimera morphisms (first done by Bodo Pareigis in 1970), then indeed Samuel was only a now-simple dualization away from defining adjoints. Since the heteromorphic treatment allows adjunctions to be factored into two, in general, independent universal mapping properties (UMPs), we also pose the question as to whether adjunctions or UMPs should be considered as category theory’s most important concept. It seems Mac Lane and most orthodox category theorists would say adjunctions but Grothendieck among others would say UMPs stated using representable functors.
On Adjoint and Brain Functors
June 16, 2015 by
We give a heterodox treatment of adjoints using heteromorphisms (object-to-object morphisms between objects of different categories) that parses an adjunction into two separate parts (left and right representations of heteromorphisms). Then these separate parts can be recombined in a new way to define a cognate concept, the brain functor, to abstractly model the functions of perception and action of a brain. This is a preprint of the paper coming out in Axiomathes.
Classical Liberalism and the Firm
March 24, 2015 by
This is a scan of my chapter in the new book: Commerce and Community: Ecologies of Social Cooperation, edited by Robert F. Garnett, Paul Lewis, and Lenore T. Ealy. London: Routledge, 2015.
On the Renting of Persons: The Neo-Abolitionist Case Against Today’s Peculiar Institution
March 24, 2015 by
To answer the “best case” voluntary-contractarian arguments for slavery and autocracy, the democratic and antislavery movements forged arguments not simply in favor of consent but arguments that voluntary contracts to legally alienate aspects of personhood were invalid “even with consent”—which made the underlying rights inherently inalienable. Once understood, those arguments have the perhaps “unintended consequence” of ruling out today’s self-rental contract, the employer-employee contract.
Talks and Publications in 2014
January 29, 2015 by
This is my 2014 yearly update on talks and publications (snarky emails and FB comments not included).
Why Delayed Choice Experiments do Not imply Retrocausality
January 23, 2015 by
This is the on-line first version (unpaginated) of my first publication in quantum mechanics. It shows how delayed-choice experiments should be interpreted so they do not imply retrocausality.