Speaker
Description
My talk gives a short account of causation in physics and of the way in which the term "observation" is used in astroparticle physics, regarding the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Then I discuss the causal features of the key model of cosmic messenger particles. The model is in accordance with Salmon’s conserved quantity account of causality but has additional probabilistic features, due to the methods of data analysis and due to the quantum nature of cosmic rays. Data analysis is concerned with the post-factual reconstruction of quantum measurements (epistemic probability). However, neutrinos propagate in quantum superpositions through the universe. Neutrino oscillations concern the relative frequency of the detection of different kinds of neutrinos, in analogy to the Which-Way Experiments of Quantum Optics (ontic probability). Hence, the causal structure of neutrino observations is typical of quantum measurements, and it is at odds with a unified conception of causality.
