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Philosophy of Science

Are Probabilism and Special Relativity Incompatible?

Nicholas Maxwell

Published Mar 1, 1985• 120 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper I expound an argument which seems to establish that probabilism and special relativity are incompatible. I examine the argument critically, and consider its implications for interpretative problems of quantum theory, and for theoretical physics as a whole.
DOI
10.1086/289220

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Are probabilism and special relativity compatible? Dieks argues that they are. But the possible universe he specifies, designed to exemplify both probabilism and special relativity, either incorporates a universal “now” (and is thus incompatible with special relativity), or amounts to a many world universe (which I have discussed, and rejected as too ad hoc to be taken seriously), or fails to have any one definite overall Minkowskian-type space-time structure (and thus differs drastically from special relativity as ordinarily understood). Probabilism and special relativity appear to be incompatible after all. What is at issue is not whether “the flow of time” can be reconciled with special relativity, but rather whether explicitly probabilistic versions of quantum theory should be rejected because of incompatibility with special relativity.
In Mundy [a] I offered an axiomatic analysis of the physical content of the kinematics of special relativity which suggests that, contrary to common belief, there is no incompatibility between special relativity and spacelike (faster-than-light) causation. An anonymous referee pointed out that this conclusion might have some bearing on problems in the interpretation of quantum mechanics such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen problem, since one line of solution to these problems involves the postulation of spacelike causal processes. The present note will develop this idea.
This article deals with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and its epistemological discussion by Ernst Cassirer and Richard Hönigswald. The starting point is Cassirer's treatise Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, published in Stockholm. Both philosophers and several physicists were involved in the subsequent exchange of letters. From a physical point of view, the Copenhagen interpretation was particularly criticised by v. Laue and Einstein. Both demanded a revision of the foundations of quantum mechanics or a critical examination of essential physical concepts. The epistemological implications of the Copenhagen interpretation were rejected, in particular that the interactions between observation, the observed and the observer in quantum physics experiments should lead to a renunciation of the concept of causality or an objectively unambiguous description of natural processes. Cassirer argues here that quantum mechanics fulfils the epistemological requirement of transforming ontological “concepts of things” into epistemological concepts of relations and is therefore compatible with the neo-critical approach he advocates. At the same time, Hönigswald was working on two major treatises on the structure of physics and the concept of causality. Here he undertakes an epistemological foundation of physics as a whole. A transcendental foundation of the concept of experience and its specifications in principles such as contemplation, observation or experiment appears to be called for. Hönigswald therefore essentially rejects the Copenhagen interpretation, as it draws epistemological consequences by physical means and thus inadmissibly reverses the transcendentally necessary relations of justification. These arguments are examined and could be used for a current discussion on the epistemological foundations of quantum mechanics and physics as a whole. A post-Neo-Kantian, transcendental philosophical foundation of scientific knowledge, especially of modern physics, seems possible and necessary.