According to Kant, intuition is a non-logical mental form of representation, one that serves partly to idealize conceptual contents and partly to render them concrete. In performing this task, intuition fulfills the semantic function of giving sense and significance to formal concepts. With reference to Kant, Bohr and Heisenberg demand that abstract quantum theory be interpreted intuitively by means of complementary classical descriptions of phenomena. This interpretation rests on Bohr’s correspondence principle, which gives sense and significance to abstract quantum theory. Since today’s physics does not have consistent axiomatic foundations, Bohr’s principle is required as a bridge principle, in order to give a physical interpretation of quantum mechanical states with recourse to classical magnitudes. In the case of the Feynman diagrams of quantum field theory, by contrast, intuition merely has the function of making a complex theoretical calculus comprehensible by means of iconic representation.
According to Kant, intuition is a non-logical mental form of representation, one that serves partly to idealize conceptual contents and partly to render them concrete. In performing this task, intuition fulfills the semantic function of giving sense and significance to formal concepts. With reference to Kant, Bohr and Heisenberg demand that abstract quantum theory be interpreted intuitively by means of complementary classical descriptions of phenomena. This interpretation rests on Bohr’s correspondence principle, which gives sense and significance to abstract quantum theory. Since today’s physics does not have consistent axiomatic foundations, Bohr’s principle is required as a bridge principle, in order to give a physical interpretation of quantum mechanical states with recourse to classical magnitudes. In the case of the Feynman diagrams of quantum field theory, by contrast, intuition merely has the function of making a complex theoretical calculus comprehensible by means of iconic representation.
Quantum theory, particularly with its concepts of indeterminacy and superposition, demands of philosophers of science a profound review and a complete redefinition of the foundation of the notion of representation. This review has significant implications for assessing the Kantian heritage, especially for those among us who recognize the advances of the transcendental approach over realist and empiricist perspectives in epistemology. Kant endeavored to establish a foundation for the notion of representation consistent with the physics of his time. Today, as inheritors of Kant’s legacy in the philosophy of science, we face the challenge of establishing a new foundation for the idea of representation that aligns with the principles of contemporary science. In his Progress of Metaphysics, as well as in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant distinguishes between analogical (symbolic) schematism and real (transcendental) schematism. My aim in this work is to explore the notion of analogical schematism for evaluating the content of extra-empirical concepts in contemporary physical theories, where intuition proves to be intrinsically indeterminate.
In the present paper I aim to discuss the philosophical foundations of the early correspondence principle (1917-1924), by comparing the conceptual structure underlying the first correspondence principle with the procedure of analogy that Immanuel Kant introduced in the Critique of Judgment from 1790. On such a comparison, I will seek to demonstrate the consistency of the conceptual ratio according to which the correspondence principle is to the classical "concepts" of space and time, as these a priori forms of intuition (space and time), in Kant, are related to the separate faculty of pure intuition. As a result, it will turn out that the conceptual structure of the correspondence principle suits to the Kantian doctrine of a separate faculty of pure intuition, which is divided from the faculty of understanding. The aim is to shed new light on the line of reasoning underlying Niels Bohr's analogical thinking in quantum physics.
Introduction In order to develop the insight that is worked out by Brock (Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, Logos, 2003), that the philosophy of quantum mechanics should parallel Kant's philosophy of natural science, some preliminary analyses of key concepts need to be done. Initiated by Niels Bohr (Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, John Wiley and Sons, 1958), the concept of ‘complementarity’ has played a major role in the interpretation of quantum theory. However, the exact place it occupies in respect of the logical form of the relation of complementarity between descriptive predicates has not been spelled out in detail to my knowledge. Complementary predicates exclude one another as simultaneous attributions to the same subject. Exactly what form does this exclusion take? How is it related to the basic exclusion-of-predicates principle, the logical law of non-contradiction?
Abstract: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science.
Prior to and into the first decade of Niels Bohr's 1913 atomic theory, physicists dealt with physical systems in which the usual space and time pictures of classical physics were assumed trustworthy and so could be extrapolated to any sort of matter in motion, for example, electrons move like billiard balls and light behaves analogously to water waves. In the German scientific milieu this visual imagery was accorded a reality status higher than viewing merely with the senses and was referred to as ‘ordinary intuition [ gewöhnliche Anschauung ]’. Ordinary intuition is the visual imagery abstracted from phenomena that we have actually witnessed in the world of sense perceptions. The concept of ordinary intuition was much debated during 1923–27 by physicists like Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Erwin Schrödinger, all of whom used this term with proper Kantian overtones, and all of whom lamented its loss in the new quantum mechanics. Ordinary intuition is associated with the strong causality of classical mechanics. According to the law of causality, initial conditions (position and velocity or momentum and energy) can be ascertained with in-principle perfect accuracy. Consequently any system's continuous development in space and time can be traced with in-principle perfect accuracy using Newton's laws of motion and conservation of energy and momentum. Any limitations to the accuracy of measurements are assumed not to be intrinsic to the phenomena, that is they are interpreted to be systematic measurement errors that ideally can be made to vanish.
Recent high-precision experimental confirmations of quantum complementarity have revitalized foundational debates about measurement, description, and realism. This article argues that complementarity is most productively interpreted as an epistemic principle--constraining what can be simultaneously accessed and represented--rather than as an ontological claim about quantum reality. Reexamining the Einstein-Bohr debate through this lens reveals a persistent tension between descriptive completeness and contextual meaning, a tension experiments clarify but do not dissolve. Building on this analysis, we introduce cognitive complementarity as a structural principle governing reasoning under non-classical uncertainty, where mutually constraining representations cannot be jointly optimized. Within this framework, we propose quantum intuition as a testable cognitive capacity: the ability to sustain representational plurality, regulate commitment timing, and resolve perspective-incompatibilities in a context-sensitive manner. Formulated as a naturalistic construct grounded in shared informational constraints, quantum intuition offers a principled bridge between quantum measurement theory and cognition. This work reframes the historical debate, extends epistemic lessons from quantum foundations into cognitive science, and outlines empirical pathways for studying decision-making in contexts of irreducible uncertainty.