Elementary Quantum Metaphysics

Richard Campbell

Metaphysical models by which we understand the fundamental make-up of our universe are all the more plausible when informed by empirically confirmed scientific theory. I have argued that contemporary physics tells us that there are no elementary particles , in any metaphysically serious sense of the word “particle”. Quantum phenomena are not concrete particular entities. The replacement of quantum mechanics by quantum field theory has major consequences for our metaphysics, in that it calls into question the tradition of according categorial priority to particular entities. Instead, categorial priority should be accorded to generic processes. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Bas C. van Fraassen

This chapter aims to place the discussion of holism in quantum theory generally and of the problem of identical particles and quantum statistics specifically in the context of general philosophy. Various debates in metaphysics, both historical and current, broach related subjects and involve analyses of concepts currently used in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. These include concepts of identity, individuation, essence, form, necessity, possibility, modality, contingency, and universality. But this chapter also extends the previous one by introducing Fock space and the transition from elementary quantum mechanics to quantum field theory via 'second quantization’. For this formalism relates clearly to certain ’anti‐essentialist’ approaches in the metaphysics of modality. Finally, in keeping with the empiricism pursued in this book, the general enterprise of metaphysics pertaining to those topics is viewed here within an anti‐metaphysical stance, as having as its value the display of a plurality of interpretations whose very diversity enhances our understanding of the theory.

Howard Burton, ARTUR K. EKERT

Russell Coleburt

Michael L. G. Redhead

…the quantum theory of fields is the contemporary locus of metaphysical research. (Stein 1970, p. 285) It is now generally recognized that Quantum Field Theory (QFT), after many vicissitudes and a period of almost total neglect, has emerged during the last ten years as a triumphant framework in which to do elementary particle physics. If philosophers are prepared to use current physical theory as a guide to resolving metaphysical questions (and that is a big “If”), then QFT is what philosophers should all be studying. But the subject is notoriously.recondite, and philosophers are busy people, so the objective of the present paper is to cut through all technicalities and try to tell in as straightforward a way as possible just what QFT has to say about “reality”.