LIT-164: Wave-Function Realism and the Scope of Physical Causal Closure

Alexander Poltorak (2026), PhilSci-Archive preprint — https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/30720/

Key takeaways

• Causal-closure arguments for physicalism leave both their domain and their completeness relation implicit. Under wave-function realism, spacetime-restricted closure fails but theory-relative closure can hold, so quantum ontology produces no causal breach for mental causes to exploit. What it does force is that physicalists supply an independent criterion of “physical” and a bridge from dynamical to causal completeness.

Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-112. What follows is what the work says about itself.

Poltorak argues that “every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause” hides two parameters: the domain of closure, and whether the completeness it asserts is causal, dynamical or explanatory. Both become unstable once “physical” is indexed to rival quantum ontologies. Wave-function realism breaks closure restricted to ordinary spacetime but can keep closure relative to fundamental physics, so there is no trans-domain breach. The upshot is a dilemma for causal arguments for physicalism. A spacetime-restricted closure principle is too narrow for serious quantum ontologies, while a theory-relative one needs a non-question-begging criterion of physicality and a dynamical-to-causal bridge. The paper also argues that this gives no support to interactionist dualism, and that Hilbert space, PBR, the Born rule and Bohmian guidance cannot deliver the stronger conclusion.

Standing in the record

Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 0 seconds of active reading over 0 sessions. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-112 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as the clearest statement of what quantum ontology does and does not do to causal-closure arguments. Its conclusions are modest, and it concedes that its main target is a picture rather than a published argument. Unrefereed.

When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-112, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: low — never opened (t=0), unrefereed, and the skim captures its argument, which is careful but narrow.

What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-112 is that reading):

• It connects the wave-function cluster (LIT-204, LIT-200, LIT-100) with philosophy of mind (causal exclusion, as in LIT-144). The consciousness topic is a plausible extra tag if the record allows more than three.
• It is a very recent preprint with no peer-reviewed version found. A deeper reading should look for later publication and check that the cited works (e.g. Bikaraan-Behesht 2022; Chalmers & McQueen 2022) are accurately represented.
• The distinction between dynamical and causal completeness is the load-bearing move. Check whether it is argued for or stipulated.

Access when seeded: The batch had only the URL and a page title. The PhilSci-Archive record 30720 was reached with a plain curl user agent, after browser-like requests hit a bot check. It gives author, title, keywords, abstract, type “pittpreprint”, eprints.date 2026-08-09 and deposit datestamp 2026-08-10. I used the deposit as first appearance; the author-supplied date is one day earlier. I read the full PDF (23 pp.) by text extraction. No journal version or DOI was found.