Abstract
Misconceptions about energy conservation abound due to the gap between physics and secondary school chemistry. This paper surveys this difference and its relevance to the 1690s–2010s Leibnizian argument that mind-body interaction is impossible due to conservation laws. Justifications for energy conservation are partly empirical, such as Joule’s paddle wheel experiment, and partly theoretical, such as Lagrange’s statement in 1811 that energy is conserved if the potential energy does not depend on time. In 1918 Noether generalized results like Lagrange’s and proved a converse: symmetries imply conservation laws and vice versa. Conservation holds if and only if nature is uniform. The rise of field physics during the 1860s–1920s implied that energy is located in particular places and conservation is primordially local: energy cannot disappear in Cambridge and reappear in Lincoln instantaneously or later; neither can it simply disappear in Cambridge or simply appear in Lincoln. A global conservation law can be inferred in some circumstances. Einstein’s General Relativity, which stimulated Noether’s work, is another source of difficulty for conservation laws. As is too rarely realized, the theory admits conserved quantities due to symmetries of the Lagrangian, like other theories. Indeed General Relativity has more symmetries and hence (at least formally) more conserved energies. An argument akin to Leibniz’s finally gets some force. While the mathematics is too advanced for secondary school, the ideas that conservation is tied to uniformities of nature and that energy is in particular places, are accessible. Improved science teaching would serve the truth and enhance the social credibility of science.
Highlights
Leibniz’s argument faced serious opposition, whether tacit or explicit, in the eighteenth century; while Leibnizian pre-established harmony gained the upper hand in Germany for a while, eventually interactionism recovered as the dominant view even there (Watkins 1995a, b, 1998; Priestly 1777, p. 64)
In the recent discussion, letting the conservation laws fail presumably has seemed like a bridge too far for all but the heartiest of a priori and/or religious metaphysicians, or the most informed about the symmetry-conservation relation (Averill and Keating 1981)
When we recall that Newton and Euler were both at least implicitly committed to accepting interactionism and letting the conservation laws fail, it is less surprising when those well versed in physics today reject the Leibnizian argument
Summary
The idea is that any causal interaction between mind and matter would violate the principle of the conservation of energy....So much the worse, it seems, for interactionism. (Though traditional, the argument is still current; for example, Dennett endorses it (1991, pp. 34–35)). This paper will briefly summarize the history of this objection (Pitts 2020b) before exploring features of conservation laws as presently understood by physicists but not widely known among philosophers This argument, due to Leibniz in the seventeenth century and often repeated until today, begs the question (Pitts 2019; Cucu and Pitts 2019). As far as causation in the created realm is concerned, our mental lives could happen in exactly the same way if there were no physical world, and the physical world could happen in exactly the same way if we had no mental lives The former point was viewed by critics as an objection in that it made God’s creating the physical world pointless, far from having the sufficient reason that all of God’s actions were claimed by Leibniz to have. His anti-interactionist argument, if successful, refutes the possible view of interactionist property dualism, that there are mental properties (but no mental substance) and these properties can act on the physical world (Searle 2004, pp. 44–46; Zimmerman 2007; Crane 2001, pp. 40, 43, 50)
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