This paper attempts a systematic comparison of the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM). The article ends with a summary table that has 13 rows and 10 columns. The columns are metaphysical principles such as determinism and reality. The rows are the main interpretations from 1925 to the present. Each row has entries such as Yes/No/Agnostic. We have contacted most of the living authors and based on their comments we have modified the entry for their interpretation. However, there is reasonable space for disagreement when it comes to determining the correct value of each box (Yes/No/Agnostic). We hope to improve the table in the future. We have also eliminated one of the columns and replaced it with two new columns. We believe that this topic is especially relevant to bridge building in dialogues on science, religion and spirituality because of the unique way that QM brings out metaphysical questions from within science. While any science may lend itself to metaphysical speculation, few sciences beyond QM have such a wide range of metaphysical speculation that all correspond to the same empirical results. This fact may humble scientists and have interesting consequences for how to build bridges between conflicting worldviews.
This paper attempts a systematic comparison of the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM). The article ends with a summary table that has 13 rows and 10 columns. The columns are metaphysical principles such as determinism and reality. The rows are the main interpretations from 1925 to the present. Each row has entries such as Yes/No/Agnostic. We have contacted most of the living authors and based on their comments we have modified the entry for their interpretation. However, there is reasonable space for disagreement when it comes to determining the correct value of each box (Yes/No/Agnostic). We hope to improve the table in the future. We have also eliminated one of the columns and replaced it with two new columns. We believe that this topic is especially relevant to bridge building in dialogues on science, religion and spirituality because of the unique way that QM brings out metaphysical questions from within science. While any science may lend itself to metaphysical speculation, few sciences beyond QM have such a wide range of metaphysical speculation that all correspond to the same empirical results. This fact may humble scientists and have interesting consequences for how to build bridges between conflicting worldviews.
Abstract Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics, but not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions. The theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical worldview in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small—and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way.
Despite scholarly consensus on the empirical facts, ever since its inception in the 1920s there has been deep disagreement about how to interpret quantum theory. “To interpret a physical theory is to say what the world would be like, if the theory were true.” All scientific theories require interpretation, since strictly speaking what they describe are our experiences of the world rather than the world itself. Thus, whether we are trying to explain or merely describe the world, we are always engaged in inference. To make inferences we need a context for interpretation. For any given claim this context is provided locally by related theories, more broadly by disciplinary paradigms, and ultimately by worldview claims about the nature of reality. The challenge in interpreting scientific theories is to integrate them into this hierarchy of knowledge. Usually this is not too difficult. New theories often require adjustments to nearby theories, but in doing so we can rely on paradigms to make them cohere. More rarely paradigmatic assumptions are themselves challenged, but in that case scientists can fall back on their worldview to make sense of the needed changes. By implication, the most difficult interpretive problems arise when our worldview is called into question, which leaves us without any frame of reference on which to fall back. Quantum theory poses a worldview problem. Prior to the quantum revolution the classical worldview could not be tested scientifically and so it was essentially metaphysical. Even though it corresponded to our experience of material objects, we lacked proof that it adequately represented the deep structure of reality. By giving us access to that deep structure for the first time, quantum mechanics made it possible to do such a test, or “experimental metaphysics.” Unfortunately, the results seemed to contradict classical assumptions, at least on the sub-atomic level.
On several levels, there is now a debate whether the concept of God can be made compatible with modern science. In an attempt to elucidate this debate, I give an account of my own experiences from writing a book on the foundation of quantum mechanics. In my opinion, one can give two independent arguments for the existence of God by taking as departure an epistemic (knowledge-based) interpretation of quantum theory. However, I also argue that any religious belief should be the result of an existential choice governed by each person’s own context (history and culture). In particular, I give my account of Christianity as a religion connected to our western culture, how one as a scientist can relate to the relevant dogmas.
The article continues the debate about whether classical “pure” metaphysics can explain scientific theories or science can generate its own metaphysical concepts. Two camps have emerged in modern analytic philosophy. The “metaphysician” camp defends the metaphysics of science by arguing that the fundamental concepts of classical metaphysics can be enriched, illustrated, or justified by examples from scientific theories. The “philosophers of science” camp views this as yet another invasion of metaphysics into their scientific territory. They advocate a scientific or naturalized metaphysics that strictly corresponds to modern scientific theories. Since the concept of possible worlds is a key element of mainstream analytic metaphysics, proponents of the metaphysics of science find it natural to appeal to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. In turn, proponents of naturalized metaphysics often use popular metaphysical systems to justify the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I will argue that the interpretation originally proposed by H. Everett remains only one of the ontologies of quantum theory, and attempts by philosophers of science to build a metaphysical construct on its basis encounter serious difficulties.
A brief review of the main ideas (interpretations) of quantum mechanics is given. Each of the considered interpretations contains a number of disputable provisions, the discussion of which allows us to develop our own understanding of the mechanism of paradoxical quantum phenomena. The article is addressed to all students who study the concepts of modern natural science, and to all readers interested in the questions what is the reality beyond the quantum mechanical experiment or if our perception really shapes the physical world in some way. The author believes that the development of quantum information technologies is impossible without answering these fundamental questions.
The intention of this paper is not to build quantum metaphysics but to justify the possibility of a second game through interpreting the ideas, concepts and visions from actual physics with ideas and visions borrowed from physics of the Orient. We are aware that quantum metaphysics is far from Abhinavagupta’s metaphysics. After Culianu we introduce both visions in a deforming grid to build a new ideational universe. This ideational universe is a transmodern construction, which tends to become topical in the context of transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity prevalence. Characterization of thinking as theory and determination of knowledge as a theoretical approach takes place in a inwardly beginning of the technical interpretation of thinking. There is an attempt to keep a sense of reason independently towards action. Philosophy is always in the critical situation to justify its existence to science. The safest way to do this is by self-establishing itself as science. But this effort represents the sacrifice of the essence of knowledge: “in the technical interpretation of thinking, the being as self element of thinking is sacrificed (Hidegger, 1988:314)”. To look positively to philosophy as a dodge of science from metaphysics proves not only destructive to philosophy but also harmful to science. Absolute objectivity claims are increasingly refuted by the development of the cognitive approach. Not only social and human sciences require subjectivity as a dimension of objective knowledge, but physics itself considered the hard part of science reaches to formulate indeterminacy (uncertainty) principles. A new perspective that might be required in the philosophy of science is to look at it as to a semiotics of cognitive act.