Entanglement and the Metaphysician on the Clapham Omnibus

Abstract

This paper explores some of the consequences of quantum entanglement for the mainstream metaphysician. The basic idea that entanglement has metaphysical consequences in the form of some kind of “holism” is familiar in the philosophy of physics literature, and finds its way into recent metaphysics, in discussions of failure of Humean supervenience, monism and emergence, for example. The principle aim here is to highlight some questions of detail that occur when attempting to make contact with those metaphysical debates as they occur in the metaphysics literature-details that matter less when the aim is just to show that there is some novelty in entanglement, but more when articulating its precise nature. The conclusion is broadly that the differences are not as great as is sometimes supposed between entanglement and more familiar phenomena already accommodated in prominent metaphysical schemes.