Language has to be conceived wholistically. Fragmented views, provoked by attempts at describing language, turn out essentially distortive on the general phenomenon which language is, with species like genetic language, programming language, formal language, observation language, inner cerebral language, external communication language. At the center of this wholism is a linguistic complementarity which obtains for every language. It reflects a linguistic realism where communicability plays a role which may be compared with that of experimentability for aphysical realism. Complementarity concepts of Bergson, Bohr, and Pauli all turn out reducible to the linguistic complementarity. Certain issues within the philosophy of quantum mechanics are viewed from the position of linguistic realism. A linguistic embedding of quantum mechanics is suggested. The Pauli-Bohr dialogue on the nondetachability of the observer is compared with the nondetachability of language, one of fourexposed views of the linguistic complementarity. Another implies nondescribability, but conceivability, of realities. It is further developed in terms of a linguistic model for existential perceptions. It compares well with reality conceptions of Bergson, Pauli, and Laurikainen.
Language has to be conceived wholistically. Fragmented views, provoked by attempts at describing language, turn out essentially distortive on the general phenomenon which language is, with species like genetic language, programming language, formal language, observation language, inner cerebral language, external communication language. At the center of this wholism is a linguistic complementarity which obtains for every language. It reflects a linguistic realism where communicability plays a role which may be compared with that of experimentability for aphysical realism. Complementarity concepts of Bergson, Bohr, and Pauli all turn out reducible to the linguistic complementarity. Certain issues within the philosophy of quantum mechanics are viewed from the position of linguistic realism. A linguistic embedding of quantum mechanics is suggested. The Pauli-Bohr dialogue on the nondetachability of the observer is compared with the nondetachability of language, one of fourexposed views of the linguistic complementarity. Another implies nondescribability, but conceivability, of realities. It is further developed in terms of a linguistic model for existential perceptions. It compares well with reality conceptions of Bergson, Pauli, and Laurikainen.
In a large variety of disciplines, fundamental studies often straddle in self-referential situations, in need of relativization to language and complementaristic resolution. In such attempts, the languages at play are hardly visible themselves. Only shadows of language, somewhat characteristic of the various disciplines, become visible and tractable. We select two domains, quantum mechanics and cybernetics, for a comparative study of their complementarity concepts with consequence for understandings of observability, describability, and objectivity. In particular, we compare Bohr–Pauli's ‘non-detachability of the observer’ and von Foerster's aphorisms for objectivity. In quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on experimentability and measurability, Bohr's primary view of complementarity takes the form of a tension between definability and measurability. In cybernetics, we have a central interest in inferribility above the more constructive measurability, and the linguistic complementarity takes the form of a tension between describability and interpretability. In quests for a complete quantum mechanical measurement language, we face an interesting situation, that of simulating semantic measurability by syntactic inferribility. It calls for a cybernetic tie, whereby the two processes of assertibility, by measurability and by provability, become united under complementarity. Although semantic and syntactic processes are complementary within the measurement language, they may be unfolded in levels of constructivity, allowing identification of the lowest levels. Namely, identification of the constructivity level of a basic measurement sentence, i.e., a sentence which can be affirmed by a direct measurement (without involving further inferences), with the lowest constructivity level of syntactic provability. We exemplify with an explanation of a recent challenge against Bohr's wave–particle compementarity. Namely, by the so called double-prism experiment of Ghose, Home, and Agarwal. We find the experiment quite interesting, not because of the alleged challenge, but by realizing that its interpretation requires a levelled approach to quantum theory.
About twenty years ago, we proposed the mathematical formulation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and further, we concluded that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and EPR-paradox are not contradictory. This is true, however we now think that we should have argued about it under a certain firm interpretation of quantum mechanics. Recently we proposed the linguistic quantum interpretation (called quantum and classical measurement theory), which was characterized as a kind of metaphysical and linguistic turn of the Copenhagen interpretation. This turn from physics to language does not only extend quantum theory to classical systems but also yield the quantum mechanical world view (i.e., the philosophy of quantum mechanics, in other words, quantum philosophy). In fact, we can consider that traditional philosophies have progressed toward quantum philosophy. In this paper, we first review the linguistic quantum interpretation, and further, clarify the relation between EPR-paradox and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. That is, the linguistic interpretation says that EPR-paradox is closely related to the fact that syllogism does not generally hold in quantum physics. This fact should be compared to the non-locality of Bell's inequality.
Recently we proposed “a new interpretation of quantum mechanics (called quantum and classical measurement theory)” in this journal (JQIS: Vol. 1, No. 2), which was characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics. This turn from physics to language does not only realize the remarkable extension of quantum mechanics but also yield the quantum mechanical world view (i.e., the philosophy of quantum mechanics). And thus, the turn urges us to dream that traditional philosophies (i.e., Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, John Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Saussure, Wittgenstein, etc.) can be understood in the quantum mechanical world view. This dream will be challenged in this paper. We, of course, know that most scientists are skeptical to philosophy. Still, we can expect that readers find a good linguistic philosophy (i.e. philosophy of language) in quantum mechanics.
The interesting double-prism experiment of Ghose, Home, and Agarwal 5) has been suggested 5, 8, 16, 7, 6) as a challenge to Bohr´s views of complementarity. With the linguistic complementarity 14) as a general notion of complementarity, we analyze Bohr´s views of complementarity. We find that a careful formulation of Bohr´s wave-particle complementarity, with an explicit characterization of measurability as a particular low-level kind of quantum theoretical inferribility, is in fact not confronted by the double-prism experiment. Much less is the outcome a challenge to Bohr´s primary view of complementarity, namely as a tension between definability and observability in a quantum mechanical observation language. This primary view of Bohr, which is visible already in his Como paper 1), is a general formulation of quantum mechanical complementarity. Although it connects well to the subsequent metamathematical development of the wider linguistic complementarity, as a tension between describability and interpretability in a language, it is today surprisingly seldom referred to in quantum mechanical texts. Rather, discussions of the role of complementarity for the interpretability problem for quantum theory tend to focus on Bohr´s view of complementarity in terms of phenomena, which he conceived in his later discussions with Einstein (and which appears less clear than Bohr´s primary view of complementarity). The hierarchical structuring of quantum theory which is suggested in our analysis of the double-prism experiment, and in the analysis of complementarity in terms of phenomena, is of interest also for the general interpretability problem for quantum theory, and for questions about a quantum mechanical reality.
How highly abstract quantum concepts were represented in language, and how these concepts were later taken up by philosophers, literary critics, and new-age gurus. The principles of quantum physics—and the strange phenomena they describe—are represented most precisely in highly abstract algebraic equations. Why, then, did these mathematically driven concepts compel founders of the field, particularly Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg, to spend so much time reflecting on ontological, epistemological, and linguistic concerns? What is it about quantum concepts that appeals to latter-day Eastern mystics, poststructuralist critics, and get-rich-quick schemers? How did their interpretations and misinterpretations of quantum phenomena reveal their own priorities? In this book, Jennifer Burwell examines these questions and considers what quantum phenomena—in the context of the founders' debates over how to describe them—reveal about the relationship between everyday experience, perception, and language. Drawing on linguistic, literary, and philosophical traditions, Burwell illuminates representational and linguistic problems posed by quantum concepts—the fact, for example, that quantum phenomena exist only as probabilities or tendencies toward being and cannot be said to exist in a particular time and place. She traces the emergence of quantum theory as an analytic tool in literary criticism, in particular the use of wave/particle duality in interpretations of gender differences in the novels of Virginia Woolf and critics' connection of Bohr's Principle of Complementarity to poetic form; she examines the “quantum mysticism” of Fritjof Capra and Gary Zukav; and she concludes by analyzing “nuclear discourse” in the context of quantum concepts, arguing that it, too, adopts a language of the unthinkable and the indescribable.
As the fundamental theory of quantum information science, recently I proposed the linguistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was characterized as the linguistic turn of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This turn from physics to language does not only extend quantum theory to classical theory but also yield the quantum mechanical world view. Although the wave function collapse (or more generally, the post-measurement state) is prohibited in the linguistic interpretation, in this paper I show that the phenomenon like wave function collapse can be realized. That is, the projection postulate is completely clarified in the linguistic interpretation.