| How are "spooky actions at a distance" possible? |
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| Pseudo-problems | |
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Recall those "spooky actions at a distance": Bell's theorem, the experiment of Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger, and a follow-up. What is so unsettling is not that we cannot explain them. As we have seen, no fundamental theory can be explained by a "more fundamental" theory; if there is a "more fundamental" theory, then the "less fundamental" theory isn't fundamental at all. Nor does the classical sleight-of-hand, which consists in the transmogrification of a mathematical algorithm into a physical mechanism or process, produce anything but nonsense. What is so unsettling is that these spooky actions at a distance do not seem possible at all. Owing to the manner in which the visual world is constructed by our minds and/or brains, we tend to share Einstein's belief that "things claim an existence independent of one another" whenever they "lie in different parts of space". It is ironic that Einstein based his belief in the mutual independence of objects situated in different parts of space on the demand that these objects be independent of the perceiving subject, for, as we have seen, it is precisely the illegitimate projection of the structure of the visual world into the physical world that underlies this belief. Because the visual world is constructed in conformity with the CCP, we tend to think of space as a substantial and intrinsically differentiated expanse in which objects are separated by empty space. Fact is that the three spins, which may be light years apart, are not independent of one another. Fiction is that they lie in different parts of space. For space isn't something that has parts. It isn't even a thing. It is a system of more or less fuzzy relations. The multiplicity of space (at any one time) is the number of relations it contains (in the proper, set-theoretic sense of "containment"), not a number of parts. If we nevertheless insist on thinking of space as an expanse that exists independently of its material "content", then quantum mechanics does not permit us to think of this expanse as divided. Instead of separating things, space unites things by its utter lack of parts. And the same is true if we think of space as a system of relations, inasmuch as relations do not separate — they unite. The overwhelming message of quantum mechanics is oneness. As an expanse, space is one and therefore it unites rather than separates. As a system of relations, it likewise unites rather than separates. In addition to that, the relata are numerically identical. The world "contains" exactly one substance — Reality. Therefore all existing spatial relations are self-relations — relations between Reality and itself. Thus there is neither a structural nor a substantial basis on which physical things could "claim an existence independent of one another." Our failure to understand the very possibility of those "spooky actions at a distances" arises from assumptions of multiplicity and separateness that do not correspond to anything in the real world. |
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