Benjamin Schumacher
Kenyon College

Co-Investigators

Michael D. Westmoreland, Denison University

Project Title

Eidostates and physical records of events

Project Summary

We observe, describe, and act upon the world from within the world. The records we possess about events are physical configurations of our memory, and the processes by which we acquire, manipulate, use and delete those records are governed by physical laws. Our "eidostate" (from the Greek "eidos", meaning "to see") is the partial description of the world that we hold based on all the information available to us. This project aims to explore how one part of the universe can construct and amend its description of the whole. In thermodynamics, this leads to a new approach in which Maxwell's demon and other "information engines" play a central role. In quantum physics, this may shed light on the measurement problem, in which quantum devices gain and use information to control other systems. Of particular interest is the way that physical agents perceive the passage of time based on their records of events. Finally, when many agents interact, their respective eidostates include information about each other. This fact connects eidostates to the field of epistemic logics, which studies the logical properties of the knowledge and beliefs held by reasoners.



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