Inference Project Talk: “No Cause for Concern: Indefinite Causal Ordering as a Tool for Understanding Entanglement”

Understanding the sorts of explanations and inferences that causal processes countenance is of course of great interest to philosophers and physicists (among others). But what can be said about physical processes that fail to exhibit classical causal structure? Indefinite causal ordering among events made possible by quantum correlations has become a fruitful arena of study recently, yielding new insights for quantum computing and communication, approaches to quantum gravity, and even for foundational issues in quantum mechanics.
In this talk, Professor Elise Crull will focus on how indefinite causal ordering may provide deeper understanding regarding the central property of quantum mechanics: entanglement. She will then consider what this case study might imply regarding traditional philosophical views of cause as a relation between independent events.
Register in advance for this meeting and for the following day’s moderated conversation with Professor Yemima Ben-Menahem of the Department of Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.