Quantum Mechanics: Ontology Without Individuals

Matteo Morganti

Olímpia Lombardi

Federico Holik, Juan Pablo Jorge, Décio Krause +1 more

In previous works, an ontology of properties for quantum mechanics has been proposed, according to which quantum systems are bundles of properties with no principle of individuality. The aim of the present article is to show that, since quasi-set theory is particularly suited for treating aggregates of items that do not belong to the traditional category of individual, it supplies an adequate meta-language to speak of the proposed ontology of properties and its structure.

Hilary Putnam

Sebastián Fortín, Olímpia Lombardi

Abstract Despite the successful development of quantum chemistry, the deep breakdown between the conceptual basis of standard quantum mechanics and some implicit ontological assumptions of quantum chemistry is only rarely acknowledged. In fact, in the framework of standard quantum mechanics, quantum systems are not individual objects in the philosophical sense: they cannot be individualized by their positions in space and time and, as a consequence, they have no trajectories. By contrast, the basic magnitude in quantum chemistry is the electronic density, which is commonly interpreted in terms of the definite positions occupied by the individual electron in its motion around the nucleus. In the present paper, it will be argued that Bohmian Mechanics offers an ontological picture that is much closer to the quantum chemists’ way of conceiving their research field.

Florian J. Boge