User talk:ZirbMonkey

On the Law of noncontradiction talkpage, you said: I know a little more about Quamtum Mechanics than I know about Philosophy. Which doesn't say much. But he's my understanding of the issue.

Any particle (photon, electron, proton, ect) fired at a double slit will travel in a state of being both a wave and a particle. This will create an interference pattern behind it showing it to act as a wave. Yet fired out one at a time and measured at the wall, we know them to have traveled a path.

Doesn't the mere fact that a particle can act as both a particle or a wave simultaneously break the law of non-contradiction since the act of measuring a particle forces it to become something other than what it was? If you measure it as a particle, it stops being a wave. If you measure it as a wave, it ceases to be a particle. It forces it to become something that it both was and wasn't until you bugged it to answer us.


 * It totally depends on your logical morals. Often people will tell you that the LNC is logically necessary, and so can never not be the case. This lemma is often justified by the principle of explosion. Those who hold that position then have to jump through a few more hoops: e.g., "all you've shown me is that a particle and a wave are not mutually exclusive, as we thought them to be; it is now evident that particle does not entail not-wave, and wave does not entail not-particle". Another easy out is: "light appears to be both a particle and a wave, but you yourself have admitted that this cannot be empirically proven, just 'suggested.' You cannot measure it as a particle and as a wave at the same time."


 * And others see your point and give up on the LNC altogether.


 * p.s. if you have access to JSTOR, check out this article: http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638%28198510%2945%3A4%3C204%3ADSAQL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T


 * It discusses alot of the logical problems that result from the tenets of quantum mechanics, particularly concerning particles. Putnam argued that the distributive law was false under quantum mechanics, and that this can be inferred from the presumed behavior of particles, but this article argues contrary. It's pretty clever. --Heyitspeter (talk) 08:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)