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Forum for Philosophy

May 5th, 2020

From the vaults: Parallel Universes

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Forum for Philosophy

May 5th, 2020

From the vaults: Parallel Universes

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Fay Dowker/ Eleanor Knox / Simon Saunders

 


Listen to the recording here or on YouTube


 

Is Schrödinger’s cat alive or dead? This thought experiment was devised to illustrate a fundamental puzzle in quantum mechanics. A radical solution is that the cat is both alive and dead, but in different, parallel universes. This is the ‘many-worlds interpretation’ of quantum mechanics and our panel of philosophers and physicists discuss why it is controversial and its strange consequences.

 

Speakers
Fay Dowker
Professor of Theoretical Physics, Imperial College London
Eleanor Knox
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, King’s College London
Simon Saunders
Professor of Philosophy of Physics, University of Oxford

 

Chair
Jonathan Birch
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE & Fellow, Forum for Philosophy

 

Organized in conjunction with the British Society for the Philosophy of Science

 

Recorded on 23 October 2017 at the LSE

 

 

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Forum for Philosophy

Science, politics, and culture from a philosophical point of view

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