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Oxford University Press eBooks

Ontological Reduction and the Wave Function Ontology*

Alyssa Ney

Published Apr 8, 2013• 83 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses the project of reducing the objects of our manifest image to a wave function ontology. Although there are prima facie difficulties about viewing ourselves and objects like tables and chairs as somehow being constituted out of an object like the wave function, several philosophers have appealed to functionalism to argue that there is no special issue for reduction to this sort of ontology. I argue that even assuming functionalism, substantial difficulties remain, and I consider what is needed to accomplish a successful reduction.

DOI
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790807.003.0008

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Abstract This chapter discusses the project of reducing the objects of our manifest image to a wave function ontology. Although there are prima facie difficulties about viewing ourselves and objects like tables and chairs as somehow being constituted out of an object like the wave function, several philosophers have appealed to functionalism to argue that there is no special issue for reduction to this sort of ontology. I argue that even assuming functionalism, substantial difficulties remain, and I consider what is needed to accomplish a successful reduction.
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Abstract This chapter proposes a solution to the macro-object problem for wave function realism. This is the problem of how a wave function in a high-dimensional space may come to constitute the low-dimensional, macroscopic objects of our experience. The solution takes place in several stages. First, it is argued that how the wave function’s being invariant under certain transformations may give us reason to regard three-dimensional configurations corresponding symmetries with ontological seriousness. Second it is shown how the wave function may decompose into low-dimensional microscopic parts. Interestingly, this reveals mereological relationships in which parts and wholes inhabit distinct spatial frameworks. Third, it is shown how these parts may come to compose macroscopic objects.
Primitive ontology is a program which seeks to make explicit the ontological commitments of physical theories in terms of a distribution of matter in ordinary space-time. This program targets wave-function realism, which interprets the high-dimensional configuration space on which wave-functions are defined as our fundamental physical space. Wave-function realism allegedly fails to account for a correspondence between the ontology it postulates and the ‘manifest image’ of the world in which experimental tests of the theory are performed, and therefore the wave-function must be completed with an additional structure which describes what fundamentally exists in ordinary space-time: the ‘primitive ontol- ogy’. However primitive ontologies face some difficulties, in particular concerning the ontological status of the wave-function. In this paper, I defend a realist inter- pretation of the wave-function as describing objects in ordinary space-time, which does not require supplementing the theory with additional structure. The main dif- ference between this proposal and other primitive ontology proposals is that the fundamental constituents of reality are not conceived of as localised objects, but as primitive relations. This interpretation purports to share the advantages of both wave-function realism and primitive ontologies without facing the same difficulties. I argue that the need for an additional structure stems from a commitment to the locality of the fundamental constituents of reality, and that such commitment is unnecessary for recovering the manifest image of the world.
Abstract What are the ontological implications of quantum theories, that is, what do they tell us about the fundamental objects that make up our world? How should quantum theories make us reevaluate our classical conceptions of the basic constitution of material objects and ourselves? Is there fundamental quantum nonlocality? This book articulates several rival approaches to answering these questions, ultimately defending the wave function realist approach. Wave function realism is a way of interpreting quantum theories so that the central object they describe is the quantum wave function, interpreted as a field in an extremely high-dimensional space. According to this approach, the nonseparability and nonlocality we seem to find in quantum mechanics are ultimately manifestations of a more intuitive, separable, and local picture in higher dimensions.
In this paper I present the common structure of quantum theories with a primitive ontology, and discuss in what sense the classical world emerges from quantum theories as understood in this framework. In addition, I argue that the primitive ontology approach is better at answering this question than the rival wave function ontology approach or any other approach in which the classical world is non-reductively ‘emergent:’ even if the classical limit within this framework needs to be fully developed, the difficulties are technical rather than conceptual, while this is not true for the alternatives.