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arXiv:1008.3896

Quantum Theory: A Pragmatist Approach

Richard Healey

Published Jan 25, 2026• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract While its applications have made quantum theory arguably the most successful theory in physics, its interpretation continues to be the subject of lively debate within the community of physicists and philosophers concerned with conceptual foundations. This situation poses a problem for a pragmatist for whom meaning derives from use. While disputes about how to use quantum theory have arisen from time to time, they have typically been quickly resolved, and consensus reached, within the relevant scientific sub-community. Yet rival accounts of the meaning of quantum theory continue to proliferate. This essay offers a diagnosis of this situation and outlines a pragmatist solution to the problem it poses, leaving further details for subsequent essays.

DOI
10.1093/9780198911586.003.0002

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Abstract While its applications have made quantum theory arguably the most successful theory in physics, its interpretation continues to be the subject of lively debate within the community of physicists and philosophers concerned with conceptual foundations. This situation poses a problem for a pragmatist for whom meaning derives from use. While disputes about how to use quantum theory have arisen from time to time, they have typically been quickly resolved, and consensus reached, within the relevant scientific sub-community. Yet rival accounts of the meaning of quantum theory continue to proliferate. This essay offers a diagnosis of this situation and outlines a pragmatist solution to the problem it poses, leaving further details for subsequent essays.
While its applications have made quantum theory arguably the most successful theory in physics, its interpretation continues to be the subject of lively debate within the community of physicists and philosophers concerned with conceptual foundations. This situation poses a problem for a pragmatist for whom meaning derives from use. While disputes about how to use quantum theory have arisen from time to time, they have typically been quickly resolved, and consensus reached, within the relevant scientific sub-community. Yet, rival accounts of the meaning of quantum theory continue to proliferate.1 In this article, I offer a diagnosis of this situation and outline a pragmatist solution to the problem it poses, leaving further details for subsequent articles. 1 Introduction 2 The Objectivity of Quantum Probabilities 2.1 Quantum probabilities are objective 2.2 Quantum probabilities do not represent physical reality 3 How Quantum Theory Limits Description of Physical Reality 4 The Relational Nature of Quantum States 4.1 Rovelli's relationism 4.2 Quantum Bayesian relationism 4.3 Reference-frame relationism 4.4 Agent-situation relationism and wave-collapse 4.5 Why quantum probabilities are not Lewisian chances 5 The Objectivity of Physical Description in Quantum Theory 5.1 Why violations of Bell inequalities involve no physical non-locality 5.2 Objectivity, inter-subjectivity, and Wigner's friend 6 Conclusion
Abstract The introduction explains the origin and development of the views expressed in these essays. Fruitful interaction with physicists applying quantum theory provided the kernel for the author’s growing interest in contemporary pragmatism, initially as a source of ideas that could solve conceptual problems blocking an understanding of quantum theory. These pragmatist ideas were later applied to more general issues in the philosophy of science and metaphysics. After briefly sketching the pragmatist view of quantum theory defended in the essays, the introduction explains the implications—for the place of quantum theory in science, for metaphysics, and for the philosophy of science and specifically for the issue of scientific realism. New results in the foundations of physics prompted revision of the original view of the objectivity of quantum event outcomes. Some later essays show how elaborating a pragmatist view of the function of truth helped to acknowledge that the outcome of a quantum measurement is a relative fact that remains objective in the sense that matters for science: others take a neo-pragmatist view of causation, explanation, and laws in science. All these later essays illustrate the neo-pragmatist moral that by focusing on the intellectual function of a concept, one can satisfy a demand for understanding that might otherwise provoke a fruitless metaphysical quest.
Abstract These essays in natural philosophy were all written from a pragmatist point of view developed over the past 15 years. They show what work pragmatism can do in science as well as philosophy. Many essays express a view of quantum theory developed using ideas of contemporary pragmatist philosophers: other essays apply these more widely to science and metaphysics. Quantum models are used not to represent physical systems but to offer good advice on how to represent them. The role of a quantum state is not to describe a system but to yield objective probabilities for alternative outcomes of events involving it. A situated agent could use these probabilities to decide what to do, and one can use them to explain phenomena. They are probabilities for physical events including measurements: pragmatist inferentialism helps one to say what these are, and when they have outcomes, thereby resolving the quantum measurement problem. One can use quantum theory locally to explain non-localized correlations, and why quantum field theory poses no ontological problem. Despite its unrivaled success, quantum theory offers no scientific image of the physical world on which a naturalist could construct a metaphysics. There are structural reasons why the rest of physical theory cannot be reduced to quantum theory. This pragmatist view of quantum theory is not instrumentalist. One essay explains why it should count as realist. Other essays defend pragmatist views of scientific laws and explanations as well as causation, truth, and objectivity.
This overview introduces the book’s aim of showing how quantum theory marks a radical break from previous scientific theorizing: We are warranted in accepting the fundamental status within contemporary physics of a theory that posits no new physical entities or magnitudes of its own. By contrast with existing interpretations that attempt to say how the world could possibly be the way quantum theory says it is, a pragmatist takes understanding quantum theory to be a matter of knowing how it is applied, and how the theory’s various elements function in these applications. So Part I of the book offers a simple, self-contained presentation of quantum theory, emphasizing applications; while Part II says why the quantum revolution matters for philosophy. Coming to terms with the quantum revolution involves adopting views of scientific theorizing, probability, causation, explanation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality that philosophers should have arrived at without its prompting.
Abstract This essay aims to show how adoption of a pragmatist interpretation permits a satisfactory resolution of the quantum measurement problem. The classic measurement problem dissolves once one recognizes that it is not the function of a quantum state to describe or represent the behavior of a quantum system. The residual problem of when, and to what, to apply the Born Rule may then be resolved by judicious appeal to decoherence. This can give sense to talk of measurements of photons and other particles in applications of quantum field theory. A quantum field theory does not describe a physical system to which it is applied as containing particles or fields. But pragmatist inferentialism shows when one may talk of particles or of fields when describing outcomes of measurements on systems to which a quantum field theory is applied.
Quantum theory launched a revolution in twentieth-century physics. But we have yet to appreciate the revolution’s significance for philosophy. Most studies of the conceptual foundations of quantum theory first try to interpret the theory—to say how the world could possibly be the way the theory says it is. But, though fundamental, quantum theory is enormously successful without describing the world in its own terms. When properly applied, models of quantum theory offer good advice on the significance and credibility of claims about the world expressed in other terms. This first of several philosophical lessons of the quantum revolution dissolves the quantum measurement problem. Pragmatist treatments of probability and causation show how quantum theory may be used to explain the non-localized correlations that have been thought to involve ‘spooky’ instantaneous action at a distance. Given environmental decoherence, a pragmatist inferentialist approach to content shows when talk of quantum probabilities is licensed, resolves any residual worries about whether a quantum measurement has a determinate outcome, and solves a dilemma about the ontology of a quantum field theory. This approach to meaning and reference also reveals the nature and limits of objective description in the light of quantum theory. While these pragmatist approaches to probability, causation, explanation, and content may be independently motivated by philosophical argument, their successful application here illustrates their practical importance in helping philosophers come to terms with the quantum revolution.