Quantum mechanics is a paradigmatic example of a scientific theory seemingly demanding ‘an interpretation’. What is it to ‘interpret’ a physical theory? Bas van Fraassen has recently argued that the attitude towards the task of interpreting science can be used to demarcate two otherwise similar epistemic stances: empiricism and naturalism. He claims that while empiricists are committed to the task of interpretation, naturalists cannot make sense of interpretation from outside the scientific theory. Naturalists, it seems, would have to be quietists about interpretation. Chapter 6 investigates in what form, if any, naturalists can make sense of the task of interpretation in the case of quantum mechanics. Doing so will shed light on the question whether interpretation of physical theories is a distinctively philosophical task, and what its purpose might be. It suggests that the aim of interpreting theories is to enhance our understanding, and that this task is not exclusively philosophical.
Quantum mechanics is a paradigmatic example of a scientific theory seemingly demanding ‘an interpretation’. What is it to ‘interpret’ a physical theory? Bas van Fraassen has recently argued that the attitude towards the task of interpreting science can be used to demarcate two otherwise similar epistemic stances: empiricism and naturalism. He claims that while empiricists are committed to the task of interpretation, naturalists cannot make sense of interpretation from outside the scientific theory. Naturalists, it seems, would have to be quietists about interpretation. Chapter 6 investigates in what form, if any, naturalists can make sense of the task of interpretation in the case of quantum mechanics. Doing so will shed light on the question whether interpretation of physical theories is a distinctively philosophical task, and what its purpose might be. It suggests that the aim of interpreting theories is to enhance our understanding, and that this task is not exclusively philosophical.
Introduction Chapter 1 dealt with one of the deepest mysteries in modern science: how to explain consciousness. This Part deals with another mystery: how to make sense of quantum mechanics. Both involve a problem of reconciliation with the classical worldview, which is one hint that the two mysteries might be related. A second is that, unlike classical physics, which makes no reference to or allowance for consciousness, quantum theory raises the issue of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world in a very direct way. These hints do not necessarily mean there is a connection between the two mysteries, but by the end of this Part I hope to have shown why it would be natural to look for one. My more immediate aim here is to give the social scientific reader an introductory understanding of the experimental findings of quantum theory, its key concepts, and the debates about its interpretation. The discussion assumes no prior knowledge of quantum physics and makes no use of mathematics. Quantum theory without equations might seem like an oxymoron, and certainly reading this Part will not enable anyone to use quantum theory. But to a perhaps surprising degree it is possible to understand quantum theory without being able to use it. Its findings can be communicated in ordinary language, and the same goes for its main concepts and interpretive debates. One consequence of this has been the emergence of a virtual cottage industry of books on quantum theory for a lay audience. Most are written by physicists, and many are quite good. However, it is not just popular treatments that do without equations: much of the professional philosophical literature does as well. (I draw on both kinds of literature below.) Philosophers of physics are trained to understand the math, of course, which is necessary for a full appreciation of the issues.
Abstract This chapter discusses the measurement problem in the context of modern epistemology of science, setting out an epistemological framework which will be used throughout the book. I suggest that the literature on the measurement problem typically assumes that quantum mechanics is confirmed by the empirical evidence regardless of interpretation, and I argue that this ultimately founders for reasons similar to logical positivism. I then invoke recent work in the epistemology of measurement by van Fraassen, Chang and Tal to argue that we cannot make sense of scientific epistemology without a satisfactory understanding of what is going on during the process of measurement. Finally, I propose an approach to the epistemology of science inspired by Chang’s progressive coherentism, and argue that this is the right way of thinking about epistemic situations in which our understanding of the operation of our measuring devices depends crucially on the very physics we are trying to find out about.
Moritz Schlick’s interpretation of the causality principle is based on his understanding of quantum mechanics and on his conviction that quantum mechanics strongly supports an empiricist reading of causation in his sense. The present chapter compares the empiricist position held by Schlick with Bas van Fraassen’s more recent conception of constructive empiricism. It is pointed out that the development of philosophy of science from Schlick’s understanding of logical empiricism to constructive empiricism reflects a difference between the understanding of quantum mechanics endorsed by Schlick and the understanding that had been established by the time of van Fraassen’s writing.
Philosophers of science commonly connect ontology and science, stating that these disciplines maintain a two-way relationship: on the one hand, we can extract ontology from scientific theories; on the other hand, ontology provides the realistic content of our scientific theories. In this article, we will critically examine the process of naturalizing ontology, i.e., confining the work of ontologists merely to the task of pointing out which entities certain theories commit themselves to. We will use non-relativistic quantum mechanics as a case study. We begin by distinguishing two roles for ontology: the first would be characterized by cataloging existing entities according to quantum mechanics; the second would be characterized by establishing more general ontological categories in which existing entities must be classified. We argue that only the first step is available for a naturalistic approach; the second step not being open for determination or anchoring in science. Finally, we also argue that metaphysics is still a step beyond ontology, not contained in either of the two tasks of ontology, being thus even farther from science.
In this essay I make use of the resources of ‘naturalized ontology’ in order to determine what quantum mechanics implies about answers to fundamental metaphysical questions. Naturalized ontology is a methodology for metaphysics influenced by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine which makes explicit reference to our best scientific theories in order to answer questions which have traditionally been reckoned to belong solely to the realm of philosophy such as ‘What is the nature of reality in the most general sense?’ Quantum mechanics faces a unique interpretational problem known as the ‘measurement problem’ which makes determining the answer to such general metaphysical questions on this view especially problematic; nevertheless, naturalized ontology interprets and evaluates the various responses to this problem via measures of ‘theoretical virtue’, and ultimately concludes that the best interpretation of quantum mechanics—and thus reality—is absurd.
According to scientific realism, science gives us an approximately true description of what the world is like. But what does it mean? In this chapter, we focus on the ontological and metaphysical aspects of this discussion. That is, we are concerned with the following questions: what there is, according to our best scientific theories? And how are these things that theories say exist? We start from the assumption that a genuine scientific realism must deal with these issues. Taking non-relativistic quantum mechanics as a case study, we discuss some of the challenges currently faced by a genuinely realistic stance. We argue, first, that in the ontological aspect, realists are in the same boat as science, that is, without sufficient epistemic justification to adopt the belief in the entities postulated by a single quantum theory, given that experience (currently) is not able to decide between rival theories; in the metaphysical aspect, realists also encounter problems with theory choice, given the possibility of associating more than one metaphysical theory with the description of the entities postulated by each quantum theory. The same goes for structuralist alternatives, since, even if we accept that scientific theories are committed to the existence of structures, but not objects, we still do not know what structures are, metaphysically. Finally, we move forward in the discussion with the meta-Popperian method, which serves to reduce the metaphysical alternatives associated with the ontological postulates of scientific theories. We may not know what the correct alternative is, but we have been able to progressively check which metaphysical alternatives are incompatible with each scientific theory.