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A program for advancing a new philosophical account of physical laws is presented. The program is non-reductive in that it maintains that any correct account of physical laws must recognize law sentences as irreducible--that is, as not admitting of an analysis which does not invoke any unanalyzed nomic facts (i.e. causal statements, law statements, subjunctive conditionals, etc.). The program has the unusual attraction of being consistent with Nominalism and epistemically in the spirit of Empiricism. Initially motivating my program is a two-stage attack in chapters two and three on all reductive accounts. The first stage of the attack is on traditional reductive accounts. Traditional reductive accounts are those accounts which do not invoke abstract entities in addressing nomic modality, i.e. in distinguishing universal laws from accidentally true generalizations or in explaining the relationship between statements of probability and statements of relative frequency. These accounts include those of Brian Skyrms, David Lewis, and Bas van Fraassen. The second stage of the attack is on all non-traditional reductive accounts. These accounts include David Armstrong's Nomic Realism. The two-stage attack exhausts the ontological ground for a reduction of laws. It is concluded that no reductive accounts of physical laws is possible. Chapter four spells out the details of my positive program. The program calls for (i) statement of the basic philosophical truths about nomic modality, (ii) the specification of axiomatic principles governing physical laws, and (iii) the analysis of nomic facts in terms of other nomic facts. The basic truths about nomic modality are stated in full. Foremost among these is the Irreducibility Thesis which states that law sentences are irreducible. Some examples of axiomatic principles governing physical laws are specified and one example of an analysis of nomic facts in terms of other nomic facts is given. The analysis is of general causal statements. Time is also spent in chapter four critically reviewing other accounts in the history of philosophy which have recognized law sentences as irreducible. The final chapter addresses the most common and the most significant objection to my positive program. That objection is the epistemological challenge of Empiricism. I argue that my program and, in particular, the Irreducibility Thesis are epistemologically innocuous.

The Bible claims that God actively governs the world on a day-to-day basis; that is, he is an active causal agent. The Bible also appears to claim that there are naturally occurring events; that is, in addition to divine causality there is natural causality. The thesis explores whether dual causality is theologically viable; whether nature may allow space for God to govern without violation of the laws of nature; and the desirability of causal closure. Having arrived at the conclusion that dual causality is viable both theologically and physically, and that causal closure is desirable, it will be proposed that dual causality is a feature of the world. Arguably the most notable dispute in twentieth century physics was that between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, culminating in the EPR thought experiment. The EPR paradox was refined and clarified by John Bell into an 'essential conflict' between special relativity and any interpretation of quantum mechanics. As a test case dual causality will be applied to Bell's essential conflict. The thesis claims that dual causality resolves Bell's essential conflict and also provides the most complete explanation of the world as revealed by modern physics. It will suggest that a theological interpretation of quantum mechanics may be possible.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-135). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Orientador: Bruto Max Pimentel Escobar. / Banca: Paulo Leal Ferreira / Banca: Francisco Caruso Neto / Banca: Walter Felipe Wreszinski / Banca: José Abdalla Helayël Neto / Doutor

Tong, Pun Wai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Basic Terminologies --- p.8 / Chapter 3 --- Causality in space-time --- p.12 / Chapter 3.1 --- Preliminaries in space-time --- p.12 / Chapter 3.2 --- Global causality condition --- p.14 / Chapter 3.3 --- Domains of Dependence --- p.23 / Chapter 4 --- Conjugate Points --- p.29 / Chapter 4.1 --- Space of causal curves --- p.29 / Chapter 4.2 --- "Jacobi field, conjugate point and length of geodesic" --- p.35 / Chapter 4.3 --- Congruence of causal geodesics --- p.47 / Chapter 5 --- Singularity Theorems --- p.57 / Chapter 5.1 --- Definition of singularities in space-time --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2 --- A singularity theorem of R. Penrose --- p.60 / Chapter 5.3 --- A singularity theorem of S.W. Hawking and R. Penrose --- p.64 / Appendix --- p.73 / Bibliography --- p.77

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-10T14:24:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-03-30. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2015-12-10T14:30:37Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000853452.pdf: 1612990 bytes, checksum: 75c88e606a8ad7a6fce9649043e465a4 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Nesta tese apresentaremos um estudo perturbativo da Eletrodinâmica Quântica Generalizada (GQED4) via abordagem da Teoria de Perturbação Causal (TPC). Com esse propósito, primeiro faremos uma revisão dos fundamentos da TPC e, daremos uma apresentação, o suficientemente geral, para sua aplicação na GQED4. Outro ingrediente essencial, para sua aplicação, é ter uma imagem da teoria livre da Eletrodinâmica Generalizada; em particular obter os propagadores de frequência positiva e negativa. Para a obtenção desses propagadores, introduziremos a sua representação analítica, tendo como base o formalismo de Wightman. Após a classificação dos primeiros termos perturbativos, apresentaremos o espalhamento Moeller e Compton e, mostraremos a modificação do primeiro com relação à Eletrodinâmica Quântica (QED4). Calcularemos as correções radiativas a 1-loop e veremos que a normalização da polarização do vácuo segue o roteiro usual, mas na normalização da auto-energia precisaremos introduzir um novo critério naTPC, a fim de satisfazer a condição de camada de massa. Mostraremos também o comportamento regular do vértice, assim como da auto-energia. Por último, demonstraremos indutivamente as simetrias discretas, as identidades de Ward-Takahashi-Fradkin e a normalizabilidade da GQED4 / In this thesis, we will present a perturbative research of the Generalized Quantum Electrodynamics (GQED4) within the approach of the Causal Perturbation Theory (TPC). With this purpose, we first make a review of the basics ofTPC and give a complete enough theory to apply to GQED4. We need the other essential part for this objetive: the Quantum Free Field Theory of the Generalized Electrodynamics, in particular, to obtain the positive and negative frequency propagators, for which, we will introduce their analytic representations, taking as basis the Wightman Formalism. After the classification of the first perturbative terms, we will present the Moeller and Compton scattering and, show the difference with the Quantum Electrodynamicsresults. We will calculate the radiactive corrections at one-loop and, show that the vacuum polarization normalization continues the usual way but, for the electron self-enegy normalization we need to introduce a new criterion in TPC, such that fulfills the mass on-shell condition. Also, we will show the regular behavior of the vertex such as in the electronself-energy. Finally, we will demostrate inductivelly the discrete symmetries, the Ward-Takahashi-Fradkin identities and the normalizability of the GQED4 / CNPq: 141079/2010-0

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