Simon Saunders

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Simon Saunders
King's College, London
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
ThesisMathematical and Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory (1989)
Doctoral advisorMichael Redhead
Doctoral studentsinclude Sherrilyn Roush
Main interests
Philosophy of physics, philosophy of science

Simon Wolfe Saunders (born 30 August 1954) is a British

structural realism
.

Saunders is currently Professor of Philosophy of Physics at the

Perimeter Institute
(2005), and IMéRA (L’Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées) (2010). He is married to Kalypso Nicolaïdis; they have two children.

Education

Saunders was an early graduate of the Physics and Philosophy undergraduate degree at the

King's College, London in 1989 under the supervision of Michael Redhead. His thesis title was ‘Mathematical and Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory’.[1]

Contributions to philosophy

Saunders was an early champion[2] of 'structural realism', the view that mature physical theories correctly describe the structure of reality. Structural realism is today regarded by many philosophers as the most defensible form of realism.[3]

He was also amongst the first[

decoherence for the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics; he defended a decoherence-based version of MWI in a series of articles throughout the 1990s.[4]

More recently, Saunders has worked extensively on the interpretation of probability in quantum mechanics. Along with

Born Rule, which relates quantum amplitudes to objective probabilities. He has applied these arguments to operational approaches to quantum mechanics[5] as well as to MWI.[6] In 2021 Saunders produced a branch counting derivation of the Born Rule.[7]

Saunders has also been a central figure in recent debates over identity and indiscernibility in physics[

bosons in quantum theory satisfied the principle of identity of indiscernibles, using the Hilbert-Bernays definition of identity.[9]

In related work, he has argued that classical particles could be treated as indistinguishable in exactly the same way that

dimensionality—of subspace of Hilbert space), and applied this to the Gibbs paradox.[10]

Saunders has also developed a general framework for the treatment of symmetries whereby all symmetries, not only gauge symmetries, as applied to strictly closed systems, yield only redescriptions of the same physical state of affairs. In a slogan: 'only invariant properties and relations are physically real'.[11]

In addition, Saunders has worked on quantum field theory, on the philosophy of time, and on the history of physics; he has written numerous encyclopaedia articles and book reviews.

Publications

Books

  • Many Worlds?: Everett, quantum theory, and reality, S. Saunders, J. Barrett, A. Kent, and D. Wallace (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010.
    ISBN 978-0199655502[12]
  • The Philosophy of Vacuum, S. Saunders and H. Brown (eds.),Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991.
    ISBN 978-0198244493

References

  1. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-08-07. Retrieved 2013-09-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. Kluwer Academic
    , p.295-326.
  3. Center for the Study of Language and Information
    .
  4. ^ 1998b’Time, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability', Synthese, 114, p.405-44; 1996a ‘Time, Quantum Mechanics, and Tense', Synthese, 107, 19-53; 1995a ‘Time, Quantum Mechanics, and Decoherence', Synthese, 102, 235-66, 1995; 1994d ‘Decoherence and Evolutionary Adaptation', Physics Letters A 184, p.1-5; 1993a ‘Decoherence, Relative States, and Evolutionary Adaptation', Foundations of Physics, 23, 1553-1585.
  5. ^ 2004a ‘Derivation of the Born Rule from Operational Assumptions’, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 460, 1-18.
  6. ^ 2005b ‘What is Probability?’, in Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics, A. Elitzur, S. Dolev, and N. Kolenda, eds., Springer.
  7. S2CID 244491576
    .
  8. ^ 2003a: ‘Physics and Leibniz’s Principles’, in Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections, K. Brading and E. Castellani, eds., Cambridge University Press.
  9. ^ 2008b (with F.A. Muller), ‘Distinguishing Fermions’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 59, 499-548; 2006b ‘Are Quantum Particles Objects?’, Analysis, 66, 52-63.
  10. ^ 2003d ‘Indiscernibles, General Covariance, and Other Symmetries: the Case for Non-reductive Relationalism', in Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics: Festschrift in Honour of John Stachel, A. Ashtekar, D. Howard, J. Renn, S. Sarkar, and A. Shimony, (eds.), Kluwer; 2006a ‘On the Explanation of Quantum Statistics’[permanent dead link], Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 37, 192-211
  11. ^ 2003a: ‘Physics and Leibniz’s Principles’, in Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections, K. Brading and E. Castellani, eds., Cambridge University Press; 2003d ‘Indiscernibles, General Covariance, and Other Symmetries: the Case for Non-reductive Relationalism', in Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics: Festschrift in Honour of John Stachel, A. Ashtekar, D. Howard, J. Renn, S. Sarkar, and A. Shimony, (eds.), Kluwer.
  12. ^ Hagar, Amit (15 October 2010). "Review of Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, and Reality, edited by S. Saunders, J. Barrett, A. Kent, and D. Wallace". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

External links

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