Entanglement as the world-making relation: distance from entanglement

Abstract

Distance, it is often argued, is the only coherent and empirically adequate worldmaking relation that can glue together the elements of the world. This paper offers entanglement as an alternative world-making relation. Entanglement is interesting since it is consistent even with quantum gravity theories that do not feature space at the fundamental level. The paper thereby defends the metaphysical salience of such non-spatial theories. An account of distance (space) is the predominant problem of empirical adequacy facing entanglement as a world-making relation. A resolution of this obstacle utilizes insights from the Ryu-Takayanagi formula (a holographic relation between entanglement and spacetime) and Susskind and Maldacena's related ER = EPR conjecture (a relation between bell pairs and wormholes). Together these indicate how distance can be recovered from entanglement and thus carves the way for entanglement fundamentalism.

An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

“…More precisely, it shows how the Lewisians -and Esfeld in particular -with their Parmenidean resistance bring attention to the interesting metaphysical question: what replaces distance as that which connects the elements of the ontology in nonspatial theories of quantum gravity? Based (primarily) on reasoning coming from string theory, I have elsewhere given the details of how entanglement can serve as an alternative world-making relation (Jaksland, 2020). The present account echoes this answer in terms of entanglement, but it does so based on loop quantum gravity which has been the primary example of a non-spatial theory of quantum gravity in the debate between Esfeld (2019) and Lam and Wüthrich (2020).…”

“…Even though these polyhedra or their related nodes bear little resemblance to objects as we know them, entanglement thus fills a role similar to that of distance in connecting the elements of the ontology. Entanglement is interesting in this regard, since it shares some of the features that made distance a likely world-making relation (Jaksland, 2020). 31 First, entanglement is an extrinsic property; something is entangled with something else.…”

Humeanism in light of quantum gravity

“…Indeed, this type of metaphysical project should be understood as trying to articulate what the (still speculative) physics of QG might be ultimately telling us about reality. Something that has become, if not ordinary, at least broadly accepted in the literature on the metaphysical foundations of QG (Matarese 2019;Vistarini 2019;Wüthrich 2019;Le Bihan 2020;Jaksland 2020). Moreover, the ER=EPR conjecture, and thus the metaphysics based on it, does not rely for its formulation on the details of the (yet to be discovered) theory of QG.…”

“…We thus argue that one can attack the problem of reconciling entanglement and Humeanism not by modifying either one or the other, but instead by looking at some tantalising approaches and conjectures regarding the extension of QM to the realm of gravity and spacetime. Studying the interaction of QG with metaphysics is a practice more and more common in the literature, as witnessed by Le Bihan (2019), Matarese (2019), Wüthrich (2019) and Jaksland (2020). This approach holds much promise for the interaction between the edge of physical and metaphysical research.…”

“…Note that this equivalence holds also in the case of Galilean spacetime, assuming we use as the relation of causal connectedness the relation R G of being in spatial contact with.13 As shown inMaudlin (2002) andHealey (2016).14 Note that, for the purposes of this paper, the causal structure of entanglement does not need to capture, in any interesting way, the overall causal structure of the world. This fact would imply the much stronger condition of entanglement fundamentalism(Jaksland 2020). We only need it to capture the structure of entanglement relations among quantum systems, as encoded in the robust counterfactual connection holding between them.15 This only holds for entanglement between spacelike separated systems.…”