Volume 2, Issue 3, pages 89-108 Rodolfo Gambini [Show Biography] and Jorge Pullin [Show Biography]
Rodolfo Gambini was educated at the University of the Republic in Uruguay and the University of Paris. He was formerly professor at the University Simon Bolivar in Venezuela and is now a professor at the University of the Republic in Uruguay. He works mainly on quantum gravity and foundations of quantum mechanics these days. In the past he has worked in gravitational waves, quantum optics and Yang-Mills theory, having created with Antoni Trias the loop representation for gauge theories.
Jorge Pullin studied at the Balseiro Institute in Argentina. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Syracuse University and the University of Utah. He became a professor at Penn State and in 2001 joined the Louisiana State University as the Horace Hearne Chair in Theoretical Physics. He mainly works on quantum gravity and the foundation of quantum mechanics these days, having made contributions in exact solutions of the Einstein equations and approximate and numerical techniques for modelling gravitational waves from the collision of black holes.
We show that several interpretations of quantum mechanics admit an ontology of objects and events. This ontology reduces the breach between mind and matter. When humans act, their actions do not appear explainable in mechanical terms but through mental activity: motives, desires or needs that propel them to action. These are examples of what in the last few decades have come to be called “downward causation”. Basically, downward causation is present when the disposition of the whole to behave in a certain way cannot be predicted from the dispositions of the parts. The event ontology of quantum mechanics allow us to show that systems in entangled states present emergent new properties and downward causation. Full Text Download (201k) | View Submission Post
