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This chapter continues the investigation of how it is that Ronnie's desire explains his reason. The Standard Model for normative explanations is introduced by way of an illustration. The Standard Model Theory is introduced, according to which all normative explanations follow the Standard Model, and it is shown that the Standard Model Theory is both substantive and interesting. Then it is shown that the Standard Model Theory licenses an argument that the Humean Theory of Reasons is literally incoherent and, failing that, an argument that it is objectionably Chauvinist. Several arguments are advanced against the Standard Model Theory. In the final section, the idea that the Humean Theory of Reasons should be understood as an analysis of reasons is motivated by reference to a Revived version of the Chauvinism objection. This leads to the proposal that Hypotheticalism is a version of reductive realism about the normative.

The modern theory of particle physics, called the Standard Model, describes electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces and all known forms of matter in terms a single conceptual principle. This chapter gives a short overview of the events that led to the discovery of this theory. It first explains the meaning of quantum field theory, which is the language used to describe the particle world. It then presents QED, the theory which describes the electromagnetic phenomena in the domain of particle physics. Finally, the Standard Model emerges from the synthesis of three intertwined stories: the discovery of quarks, the unification of electromagnetism with the weak force, and the understanding of the strong force in terms of QCD.

In some fermionic systems the total topological charge of the Fermi point vanishes. However, the discrete symmetry may produce the nonzero p-space topological invariant, which protects the nodal point in the spectrum. Examples are provided by the planar phase of triplet superfluid/superconductor and the Standard Model of particle physics. This chapter discusses the momentum space topology protected by symmetry and Dirac mass emerging due to violation of symmetry. Theory is applied to the Standard Model and its extension, the Pati–Salam unification of quarks and leptons, which is represented in terms of spinons and holons. The generating function for the p-space topological invariants constrained by symmetry is introduced. Because of the discrete symmetry of the Standard Model all quark and leptons are massless in the symmetric phase of the Standard Model, while the violation of this symmetry gives mass to all fermions. The chapter also discusses re-entrant violation of special relativity at low energy, and p-space topology of exotic fermions with semi-Dirac spectrum.

This chapter discusses the physics of the Standard Model with detailed treatment of electroweak Lagrangian interactions, the Higgs mechanism, fermion masses and mixing, gauge bosons, and effective low-energy CC and NC Lagrangians.

This chapter provides a brief description of the way CP violation is accommodated in the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Some SM predictions for CP-violating observables are mentioned, and conversely, the information in which measurements of CP violation can provide about its parameters is discussed. How CP violation could arise in different ways is described. Further reading topics and exercises are provided at the end of the chapter.

This chapter argues for the importance of competing theories about moral explanations by showing the role that they play in a familiar and tempting argument against voluntarist ethical theories that is due to Ralph Cudworth. The Standard Model Theory is shown to be incompatible with the possibility of perfectly general explanatory moral theory, and it is argued that the Constitutive Model, which relies on analyses of moral properties and relations, provides a natural and viable alternative. The Standard Model Theory is inconsistent with the reducibility of the moral to the non-moral, but it requires an independent argument against such a reduction.

Parity violation, the asymmetry between left and right, is one of the fundamental properties of the quantum vacuum of the Standard Model. This effect is strong at high energy on the order of the electroweak scale, but is almost imperceptible in low-energy condensed matter physics. At this scale the left and right particles are hybridised and only the left-right symmetric charges survive. An analog of parity violation exists in superfluid ³He-A alongside related phenomena such as chiral anomaly and macroscopic chiral currents. The fermionic charge of right-handed particles minus that of left-handed ones is conserved at the classical level but not if quantum properties of the physical vacuum are taken into account. This charge can be transferred to the inhomogeneity of the vacuum via the axial anomaly in the process of helical instability. The inhomogeneity which absorbs the fermionic charge arises as a hypermagnetic field configuration in the Standard Model and as vortex texture in ³He-A. This allowed the experimental simulation of magnetogenesis (generation of hypermagnetic field) in ³He-A. Chern–Simons energy term in the Standard Model and in ³He-A is also discussed, where the effective chemical potential for chiral fermions is provided by counterflow velocity: relative velocity of motion of normal component of the liquid with respect to the superfluid one.

The book studies relations of condensed matter with particle physics and cosmology. The fundamental links between cosmology and particle physics have been well established and is widely exploited in the description of the physics of the early universe (baryogenesis, cosmological nucleosynthesis, etc.). The connection of these two fields with the third ingredient of modern physics — condensed matter — allows us to simulate the least understood features of high-energy physics and cosmology: the properties of the quantum vacuum (also called aether, spacetime foam, quantum foam, Planck medium, etc.). The new concept inspired by condensed matter physics is opposite to the fundamental concept of broken symmetries used in Grand Unification Theory (GUT). In the anti-GUT scenario, gravity and the relativistic quantum field theory, such as the Standard Model of particle physics and GUT, are effective theories. They are emergent phenomena arising in the low-energy corner of the physical vacuum, where the system acquires physical laws and symmetries, which it did not have at higher energy.

Despite the overwhelming successes of modern physics, there are questions that remain to be answered and these are considered in the final chapter. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is discussed, including the EPR paradox, the Aspect experiments and quantum entanglement. Next, the question of whether particles are really point-like and the possibility of an alternative description in terms of solitons is considered. The Skyrmion and the Standard Model sphaleron are described. Unexplained features of the universe, such as the matter–antimatter asymmetry, the existence of dark matter and the even more mysterious dark energy, are discussed. There is also a critique of the loose ends of the Standard Model and the need for a quantum theory of gravity. The chapter concludes with a look beyond the Standard Model at the arguments and evidence in favour of Grand Unified Theories and ultimately string theory.

The Standard Model, in spite of its amazing success, has several flaws, such as failing to include dark matter. Physicists are looking for an alternative, a more encompassing theory going beyond the Standard Model to describe the so-called “new physics.” One of the hypotheses under study is called supersymmetry, or SUSY. It has much appeal: SUSY builds on the Standard Model; unifies the two types of fundamental particles, the grains of matter and the force carriers; and predicts several new particles, one of which would be ideal for solving the dark matter enigma. Its biggest problem? It remains undiscovered, despite all the efforts made to find it at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. But there still a chance that this hypothesis could be right. With the restart of the LHC at higher energy in 2015, supersymmetry, if it exists, could be discovered soon.

This chapter explains why physics could not rest content with classical Yang-Mills theories, and shows how a classical Yang-Mills field theory may be transformed into a quantum field theory. Quantum Yang-Mills theories provide the foundation for the Standard Model of elementary particles — currently our most successful representation of the fundamental forces of nature at high energies and extremely short distances. After pointing out the difficulties for quantization posed by the gauge structure of these theories, the rest of the chapter describes several different methods for overcoming them. By doing so, it lays a technical foundation for the analysis of the rest of the book.

This substantive new introduction provides a map to how to read the following essays as contributing to a unified argument about the nature and commitments of explanatory moral theory. The Standard Model Theory is introduced and traced to Ralph Cudworth, and the consequences both of accepting it and of rejecting it are traced through the remaining eleven chapters, covering reduction, supervenience, instrumental rationality, and autonomy.

The structure of matter and the forces that are important in particle physics are now understood in terms of the Standard Model, which is currently being tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Since the 1930s, physicists have used particle accelerators to investigate the structure of matter. Three forces are important in particle interactions, the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force. The weak and electromagnetic forces are now recognized as two components of a unified electroweak force. The strong force and the electroweak force act on a small collection of fundamental particles that include quarks, the subcomponents of protons, neutrons and many other particles. The final missing piece of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, was discovered by the LHC in 2012.

This chapter offers a brief introduction to quantum field theory and an outline of modern particle physics. The fundamental particles of the Standard Model are introduced. The quantization of fields is described, first the electromagnetic, then the Klein–Gordon and Dirac fields, followed by the prediction and discovery of antimatter. The importance of the action in QFT is outlined, along with its relationship to Feynman diagrams, particle interactions and QED. The path from the strong force to quarks, gluons and QCD is presented. The weak force is discussed, along with the subsequent discoveries of the neutrino and parity violation. The unified electroweak theory is described, including the Higgs mechanism. The discoveries of the W and Z bosons and the Higgs boson are discussed. Quark mixing and the CKM matrix are explained. The experimental determination of the number of generations is discussed. Neutrino oscillation experiments and their theoretical explanation are described.

Renormalizable Relativistic Quantum Field Theories (R²QFTs) are theories In which a few parameters must be taken from observations but otherwise make predictions on the phenomena they describe. The ingreedients of the Standard Model of particles are examples. The most precise of them is Quantum Electro-Dynamics (QED). The QED prediction of the “anomalous” magnetic moment of the muon is discussed as a detailed example. Relativistic quantum fields describe all aspects and properties of particles and their interactions, they are “the mother of all concepts.”

This chapter explores whether the Standard Model Theory can offer a strategy for answering at least one important form of modal challenge for non-reductive realism in metaethics. Richard Price’s apparent claim that all moral truths are necessary is used as inspiration in order to outline a general strategy for responding to a version of the modal challenge based on Hume’s Dictum that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Different implementations of this idea, including one due to T. M. Scanlon, are distinguished, and it is argued that the most promising implementation will draw extensively on the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goodness or wrongness, and on the Standard Model Theory.