Jeff Barrett Professor  of  Logic & Philosophy of Science

Research Interests

I am interested in the philosophy of science and the theory of knowledge generally, but most of my research has been in the philosophy of physics. For the past few years I have been primarily interested in attempts to resolve the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The measurement problem arises from the fact that the standard theory's two dynamical laws are incompatible: one is linear and the other nonlinear. Since they constitute contradictory descriptions of the time-evolution of physical states, they threaten to render the standard theory logically inconsistent if one is unable to specify strictly disjoint conditions for when each applies. We are told that the linear dynamics is to be used in all situations except when a measurement is made in which case the nonlinear collapse dynamics is to be used. But this is exactly where the standard theory fails us--it does not tell us what constitutes a measurement, so we do not know when to apply the liner dynamics and when to apply the collapse dynamics. Much work has been done on the measurement problem. There have been several proposed solutions, but so far no proposal seems entirely satisfactory.

Recently, Wayne Aitken and I have been developing an algorithmic logic for statements of the form "Algorithm A outputs X when given input Z". It is a feature of the logic that logical connectives and quantifiers are algorithmically defined. This has led to our research on the structure of the Curry Paradox and the limits of modus ponens as a valid rule of inference.

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