Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory: What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for interactions so that they are empirically traceable, and that observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. We investigate consequences of this assumption: The unfolding language game, inspired by logic, leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories. Disturbance becomes a means to render interactions, thus, also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement problem arises in all such theories, not only quantum mechanics: It is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions.
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory: What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for interactions so that they are empirically traceable, and that observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. We investigate consequences of this assumption: The unfolding language game, inspired by logic, leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories. Disturbance becomes a means to render interactions, thus, also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement problem arises in all such theories, not only quantum mechanics: It is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions.
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for interactions so that they are empirically traceable, and that observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. We investigate consequences of this assumption: The unfolding language game, inspired by "quantum logic," leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories. Contextuality becomes a means to render interactions, thus also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement "problem" arises in all such theories, not only quantum mechanics: It is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions. And a consequence of the converse need for an interaction when obtaining that empirical evidence.
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that our contact with the world is empirically warranted. Therefore, we study theories that satisfy the following assumption: Interactions are accounted for so that they are empirically traceable, and observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. Examining, with regard to these assumptions, an abstract representation of measurements with tools from quantum logic leads us to contextual theories. Contextuality becomes a means to render interactions, thus also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement becomes problematic---also beyond quantum mechanics---if one tries to commensurate the assumption of tangible interactions with the notion of a spectator theory, i.e., with the idea that measurement results are read off without effect. The problem, thus, presents itself as the collision of different epistemological stances with repercussions beyond quantum mechanics.
Abstract We use the Wigner’s friend story to characterize the quantum measurement problem. On the standard formulation of quantum mechanics, whether a physical system is measured determines which of the theory's two dynamical laws obtains. For this reason, the logical consistency of the theory depends on one specifying strictly disjoint conditions for when when each law obtains, which means that one needs to say precisely what constitutes a measurement. But since the term measurement occurs in the standard theory as an undefined primitive term, the theory is at best incomplete. We see precisely how this conceptual incompleteness threatens the logical inconsistency of the theory and why, on even the most charitable reading, it entails that the theory is empirical incomplete. We end by considering why its empirically incompleteness is extremely difficult to test.
This paper examines the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, particularly the concept of “language games” and rule-following. The discourse surrounding quantum mechanics – characterized by terms like superposition, measurement, observer and entanglement – is deeply metaphoric and often stretches the bounds of classical language-use. This creates interpretative confusions not just in science, but in the metaphysical and epistemological debates that follow. Building on Philosophical Investigations, this paper argues that many foundational problems in quantum mechanics (e.g., the measurement problem, wave-function collapse, observer effect) are not exclusively ontological or physical but are entangled in language-use anomalies. The paper proposes that interpretative divergence among schools (Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, QBism, etc.) can be partly understood as conflicts between distinct language games with different rule-sets about what counts as a “measurement”, “reality”, or “causality”. By reading quantum discourse through Wittgensteinian criteria of meaning-as-use, the paper shows how the scientific community performs tacit normativity in deploying quantum terms – frequently without shared agreement on referents. Quantum mechanics, then, becomes a philosophical case study in the fragility and productivity of linguistic scaffolds in scientific theory. Finally, this paper makes a case for a deflationary yet clarifying approach: instead of seeking a “true” interpretation of quantum mechanics, we may better understand the philosophical stakes by analyzing the discursive rules, contextual boundaries, and pragmatic criteria that underlie quantum speech acts.
The concept of measurement plays both a central and a problematic role in quantum mechanics. First of all, and unusually, the word ‘measurement’ figures in the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics - in principle (3) of Chapter 2 for example - and in this quantum physics is quite unlike classical physics as a whole. For though a measurement made on a classical system naturally involves an interaction between the system and a measuring apparatus, there is nothing special according to classical physics about measurement interactions. Describing the measuring process is a straightforward problem of applied classical physics. The classical laws of motion do not break down during the measuring process. For example, suppose you observe a classical particle using light bounced off it. In the classical account you can make the disturbance on the observed system as small as you like and, ‘in principle', you can observe the system with arbitrary accuracy. ‘In principle’ - a favorite expression of the philosopher of physics - means what it always means in physics. The contrast is with ‘in practice'. Of course, in practice there are all sorts of limitations on measurement. There are also some theoretical limitations, like those due to thermodynamics. But these are not the limitations imposed by the theory we are considering, namely classical mechanics. Such limitations as there are are imposed by some other theory. (The expression ‘in principle’ tends to be used when we are discussing the principles of a particular theory and, theoretically but not in practice, physics is a collection of disjoint theories.)
Abstract The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is commonly framed as a conflict between unitary dynamics and the appearance of definite outcomes. This paper argues that the conflict arises from a misplaced assumption about what outcomes must be. In experimental practice, outcomes are not arbitrarily precise microscopic states or instantaneous events, but stable physical records produced in measurement interactions. Treating outcomes as such records allows them to be formalized as coarse-grained equivalence classes of physical states that persist in time and support consistent interaction across systems. On this basis, decoherence explains the stability of outcomes without selecting a unique global result or modifying quantum dynamics. Objectivity is recovered through the robustness of records rather than through absolute, observer-independent outcome facts. The measurement problem is thereby dissolved without invoking collapse mechanisms, branching universes, or observer-dependent postulates, while preserving all standard empirical predictions of quantum mechanics.