A Note on Plotnitsky’s Notion of a Reality without Realism
Jan Faye
For many years, Arkady Plotnitsky has written extensively about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and his source of inspiration has undoubtedly been Niels Bohr’s philosophy to which he has returned time and again in order to make clear what Bohr said and meant. More than many other philosophers, Plotnitsky’s work shows a deep understanding of quantum mechanics and of Bohr’s thinking especially. In the present paper, he attempts to give a rational reconstruction of what he sees as Heisenberg’s Pythagorean revolution. This he explains as Heisenberg’s aim in his search for a theory. Heisenberg was looking for “a strictly predictive theory of quantum phenomena (only probabilistically predictive on the experimental grounds), without requiring this theory to represent the ultimate reality responsible for quantum phenomena. This is the form of Pythagorean view that this article advocates under the heading of the ‘reality-without-realism’ (RWR) Pythagorean view, also possible in mathematics”. Unfortunately, I think that Plotnitsky’s rational reconstruction misses some important historical facts just as I think the expression “ultimate reality” is unfortunate. Rejecting that our physical theories represent a world beyond the phenomena does not imply that there is something left to be represented in the future.
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science•Jan 1, 2025•0 citations