The Nugget

Experimental metaphysics merges physics and philosophy to test fundamental assumptions about reality, revealing that the nature of reality might be stranger than previously thought, often challenging the concepts of locality, realism, and the absoluteness of observed events.

Make it stick

🌌 Metaphysics: The deep scaffolding of the world, dealing with space, time, causation, and existence.
🧩 Experimental Metaphysics: Uses scientific experiments to test philosophical worldviews.
🔗 Bell's Inequality: Shows that locality and realism can't both be features of reality.
🔍 No-Go Theorem: Experimental metaphysics tests worldviews, not just theories, revealing what is possible.

Metaphysics deals with fundamental concepts like space, time, and existence and is usually considered untestable.
Experimental Metaphysics combines physics and philosophy to test these deep-seated assumptions, pioneered by Eric Cavalcanti.

Immanuel Kant believed the properties of space were necessarily Euclidean and untestable.
1919 experiment showed space is warped by gravity, contesting Kant’s view.
Pierre Duhem’s, Henri Poincaré’s, and Willard V. O. Quine’s philosophical contributions highlighted that science and metaphysics are intertwined.

Eric Cavalcanti and colleagues published a pivotal experimental metaphysics theorem.
John Stewart Bell’s Theorem and subsequent inequalities (e.g., CHSH inequality) demonstrated incompatibilities between locality, realism, and quantum mechanical predictions.
Contributions from physicists like Abner Shimony and Alain Aspect further blurred the lines between physical experiments and philosophical inquiry.

Wigner’s Friend thought experiment questioned a shared, objective reality.
Cavalcanti’s team proved that if quantum predictions hold, we can’t simultaneously have locality, freedom of choice, and absolute observed events.
The complex nature of defining an observer, be it a physical system or AI, brings cognitive science into the fold of experimental metaphysics.

"The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science."
"Science and philosophy form a single whole." – Ferdinand Gonseth
"It’s an important improvement... It’s the most precise, strongest no-go theorem." – Časlav Brukner
"We may hope that after we carve out all the bits that experiment allows us to, what remains forms a beautiful whole." – Eric Cavalcanti
"The strength of these no-go theorems is exactly that they do not test any particular theory, but a worldview." – Eric Cavalcanti

This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.