Many of the pioneers of quantum mechanics – notably Planck, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Jordan, Landé, Wigner, and London – were seriously concerned with philosophical problems. In each case one can ask a question of psychological and historical interest: was it a philosophical penchant which drew the investigator towards a kind of physics research which is linked to philosophy, or was it rather that the conceptual difficulties of fundamental physics pulled him willynilly into the labyrinth of philosophy? I shall not undertake to discuss this question, but shall cite an opinion of Peter Bergmann, which I find congenial: he learned from Einstein that “the theoretical physicist is … a philosopher in workingman's clothes” ([1], q. v.). The problems with which I am preoccupied concern the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics – either epistemological, bearing on the extent, validity, and character of human knowledge; or metaphysical, bearing on the character of reality. Although quantum mechanics is not a system of philosophy, one can wonder whether it is susceptible to coherent incorporation in a philosophical system. I propose to examine the thought of three masters of quantum mechanics – Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger – not with a critical or historical intention, but in hope of finding some enlightenment concerning the problems posed by contemporary physics. I can say in advance that enlightenment will continue to elude us; nevertheless, the ideas of Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger are rich and evocative for new studies.
Abstract There is something fundamentally disturbing about contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophical cognitive science. Almost without exception (exceptions such as Lockwood (1989) and Chalmers (1996, see esp. p. 349) ), the philosophical theories are logically inconsistent with the most well-confirmed theory ever developed by humans, namely, quantum mechanics. Why do philosophers develop theories of the mind-brain as if quantum mechanics does not exist, or as if it is utterly irrelevant to theories of the mind-brain? I believe this epistemic situation has arisen due to a series of questionable philosophical arguments about the role of philosophy of mind/cognitive science and quantum mechanics in our overall theoretical framework. In sect. I explain some of these arguments and contend they are unsound.
Recently, the dominant philosophical paradigm in Western social and political sciences has been criticized by a number of researchers and the necessity of transition to a new – quantum – transdisciplinary paradigm using ideas, concepts and formalism of quantum mechanics has been justified. The author argues that the need for such a transition is due to the fact that the dominant paradigm is based on outdated assumptions and premises of Modern philosophy, which really should be abandoned. It is quantum mechanics that contains the potential for a new philosophy. Classical mechanics had a significant impact on the development of philosophy, particularly on Kant’s critical philosophy, for which it served as the ideal of scientific knowledge. Today, a similar influence is exerted by quantum mechanics. Quantum ideas have also begun to be applied in the field of socio-political thought, particularly in the study of international relations, global politics, and global security. At the same time, the author argues that what many researchers take to be the “quantum paradigm” in the social and political sciences is in fact in many ways not so much an overcoming of the Modern paradigm as a postmodernist radicalization of it. In other words, the alternative they propose turns out to be a pseudo-quantum alternative. It is proposed the conceptual scheme of a contextual quantum realism as a genuine quantum alternative.
Introduction We saw in Part I that in addition to explaining consciousness there is another hard problem for the modern scientific worldview – understanding what quantum physics is telling us about reality. And if anything this one is harder. In philosophy of mind there is at least consensus enough for an orthodox position to exist (materialism), and a widespread expectation that it will be vindicated by future neuroscience. By contrast, in philosophy of physics all sides understand that quantum theory is compatible with a variety of metaphysical interpretations, and have little hope that new empirical discoveries will settle the matter. But both problems are “hard” in the sense that, despite tremendous intellectual effort over many decades, no clear progress has been made toward solving them. The basic idea of quantum consciousness theory is that bringing the two problems into contact may be the key to solving both (though I will be addressing only the mind–body problem in what follows). That this could be a novel idea attests to the fact that their philosophical discussions have evolved quite separately. While philosophers of physics have long been interested in the role of consciousness in the measurement process, they have engaged little with the mind–body problem per se; and philosophers of mind have been almost unanimous in dismissing the suggestion that consciousness has anything interesting to do with quantum physics. Social scientists might echo such skepticism, wondering how adding the problem of interpreting quantum theory to the problem of consciousness will help them . Besides piling up jargon and arcane debates, in moving to the sub-atomic level we are now even farther removed from the human world, and seemingly poised to engage in the most vulgar reductionism. Yet, naïvely one might expect the two problems to be related, for two reasons. The first is the intriguing analogies mentioned in Chapter 1 between the mental and quantum domains.
This two-tier conference signals a new phase of philosophers' interest in quantum field theory, which has been growing noticeably in the last few years. However, some prominent physicists have shown their deep suspicions against ignorant philosophers' intrusion into their profession, and have expressed their hostility quite openly. In the philosophy community, some prominent philosophers of physics have also expressed their suspicions against the rationale of moving away from the profound foundational problems raised by Einstein and Bohr, Bohm and Bell, such as those concerning the nature of space-time and measurement, possibility and implications of hidden variables and nonlocality, and stepping into the technical complexity of quantum field theory, which is only an application of quantum mechanics in general without intrinsically distinct philosophical questions to be explored. In order to dispel these suspicions, it is desirable to highlight certain aspects of quantum field theory which require philosophical reflections and deserve further investigations. This discussion intends to suggest that philosophers can learn many important lessons from quantum field theory, and may be of some help in clarifying its conceptual foundations. At this stage of crisis that quantum field theory is experiencing now, the clarification may contribute to the radical transformation of our basic concepts in theoretical physics, which is necessary for a happy resolution of the crisis and the emergence of a new promising fundamental physical theory. Generally speaking, philosophers are interested in the metaphysical assumptions adopted by science and the world picture suggested by science.
Quantum mechanics is certainly a strange place to start an investigation into the nature of the relationship between science and society. However, this article begins by integrating its history and proceeds through current conceptions of it by some physicists to examine quantum mechanics as an intersection of both science and knowledge. A famous thought experiment by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen pointed to an area that few physicists still research–a paradigm gone awry. Yet the vast majority of physiciststoday do not agonize over this uncertainty. Physics today presses forward with indominable speed and precision. But by questioning a small sample of physicists doing physics about their practice, this study aims at an everyday physicist’s understanding of the matter; a paradox that lies between the results of experiment and their interpretation or place as knowledge in society. For Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, the paradox was that we can only determine the spin of an entangled particle–it only becomes real–after measuring the spin of its partner particle. For a few contemporary physicists, the problem is how to understand the fact that a measured particle “teleports” its state instantaniously to another point in space. Practicing physicist resolve this, to put it simply, by just using it. Quantum mechanics, as with physics, is incredibly accurate–accepting it as truth yields results that physicists and society can use. By interrogating this process in its historicity and current formulation, this article sheds some light on the way physics works as knowledge. It provides a possibility for turning the scientific eye toward the very meaning of science.