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Physics Letters A

Critique of a recent claim of a formal difference between the Copenhagen and statistical interpretations of quantum theory

Dipankar Home, M. A. B. Whitaker

Published Nov 1, 1991• 3 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/0375-9601(91)90659-v

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arXiv:1011.2287•Nov 10, 2010•1 citation
The Copenhagen interpretation is first and foremost associated with Niels Bohr's philosophy of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I attempt to lay out what I see as Bohr's pragmatic approach to science in general and to quantum physics in particular. A part of this approach is his claim that the classical concepts are indispensable for our understanding of all physical phenomena, and it seems as if the claim is grounded in his reflection upon how the evolution of language is adapted to experience. Another, recent interpretation, QBism, has also found support in Darwin's theory. It may therefore not be surprising that sometimes QBism is said to be of the same breed as the Copenhagen interpretation. By comparing the two interpretations, I conclude, nevertheless, that there are important differences.
According to the standard view, the so-called ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics originated in discussions between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1927, and was defended by Bohr in his classic debate with Einstein. Yet recent scholarship has shown Bohr's views were never widely accepted, let alone properly understood, by his contemporaries, many of whom held divergent views of the ‘Copenhagen orthodoxy’. This paper examines how the ‘myth of the Copenhagen interpretation’ was constructed by situating it in the context of Soviet Marxist critique of quantum mechanics in the 1950s and the response by physicists such as Heisenberg and Rosenfeld.
Cramer's (1986) transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics posits retrocausal influences in quantum processes in an attempt to alleviate some of the interpretational difficulties of the Copenhagen interpretation. In response to Cramer's theory, Maudlin (2002) has levelled a significant objection against any retrocausal model of quantum mechanics. I present here an examination of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics and an analysis of Maudlin's critique. I claim that, although Maudlin correctly isolates the weaknesses of Cramer's theory, his justification for this weakness is off the mark. The cardinal vice of the transactional interpretation is its failure to provide a sufficient causal structure to constrain uniquely the behaviour of quantum systems and I contend that this is due to a lack of causal symmetry in the theory. In contrast, Maudlin attributes this shortcoming to retrocausality itself and emphasises an apparently fundamental incongruence between retrocausality and his own metaphysical picture of reality. I conclude by arguing that the problematic aspect of this incongruence is Maudlin's assumptions about what is appropriate for such a metaphysical picture.