Information, entanglement and causation

OLIMPIA LOMBARDI; CRISTIAN LÓPEZ

Helsinki

Congreso; 15° Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science; 2015

The Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science - University of Helsinki

According to the physical interpretation of the concept of information -very usual among physicists and communication engineers-, information is a physical item that, like other physical quantities, can be stored, accumulated, generated in one place and transmitted to another place, and transformed from one form to another form. To the extent that it is a physical item, information needs a signal acting as its physical carrier, and can only be transferred through interactions. In spite of its wide diffusion, this interpretation is challenged by quantum information entanglementassisted communication shows that, although mere correlation is not sufficient for communication, the need of a physical signal for the transmission of information is a too strong requirement. The traditional physical view leads to artificial solutions some authors consider that information can travel backwards in time others claim that quantum information flows hidden in classical bits. We want to argue that, even in the case of entanglement-assisted communication, there is no need to discard the physical interpretation of information it can be retained -without falling into a mere epistemic view of information- without requiring a physical carrier for information transmission. For this purpose it is necessary to support the idea that what happens at the source of information causes what happens at the destination, but with a concept of causality that does not rely on physical interactions or space-time connections. We think that a manipulability account of causation works perfectly in this sense. Intuitively, from this approach the relationship between source and destination is causal because it is potentially exploitable for purposes of manipulation and control. The link between information and manipulability lies in the fact that there is transmission of information whenever we can change the informational content of the destination effect by manipulating the source cause.