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The Uncertainty Relations

Patrick A. Heelan

Published Jan 1, 2015• 0 citations
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Abstract

Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

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Heelan argues that the philosophy of complementarity, although successful in providing physicists with a common language with which to describe quantum phenomena, also contains a theory about scientific method and about human knowing which is open to criticism. Heelan here criticises the following points arising out of the philosophy of complementarity: psycho-physical parallelism; the view that quantum mechanical properties are to be defined classically; and the perturbation theory of measurement. In the course of the criticism, he elaborates the distinction between two types of concepts with different logical structures; viz., operational or observational concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of appearance or utility to us, and explanatory concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of a self-defining set of different relations between things. Heelan thus shows how a physical concept is definable by any appropriate measuring-process. The description of the measuring­process and, hence, the definition of the physical property involve the two classes of concepts described above, but in different ways. Thus one may regard the Indeterminacy Relations, not as stating limi­tations of our knowledge, but as describing more exactly the behaviour of individual systems.

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REALITY IN HEISENBERG'S PHILOSOPHY - Chapter Eight of Heelan's Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity

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This chapter contains a study of Heisenberg's views of the ontological content of quantum mechanics from I925 until the present day. During the quantum revolution of I925, he began by accepting a Berkeley-type empiricism in which the reality of a quantum mechanical system was reduced to that of a set of observation events, which were, however, acausally connected and in consequence did not constitute a stable phenomenal object of experimental knowledge. After 1955, he professed a modified form of Kantian philosophy whose starting point was the existence of universal and necessary scientific laws. Those universal and necessary scientific laws from which Kant started have been shown to belong only to restricted domains of intuitive experience (the domain of everyday life and classical physics). Heisenberg defines noumenal reality as the object of an intellectual intuition (episteme) which, however, is a kind of knowledge we do not possess. We know noumenal reality only through symbols in an intellectually patterned experience. There are two kinds of noumenal reality: there is the thing-in-itself which is the correlate of the phenomenal object, and there is the dunamis (or Aristotelian potentia or objective tendency) which is the correlate of the quantum mechanical system (e.g., elementary particle, atom, etc.). The latter is the noumenal correlate of the phenomenal or experienced union of subject and object taking place in the act of observation. The importance of universal symmetries in the expression of general laws of nature is stressed by Heisenberg, and these constitute for him the true basis for transcendental philosophy.

•Jan 1, 1965•0 citations
Heelan argues that the philosophy of complementarity, although successful in providing physicists with a common language with which to describe quantum phenomena, also contains a theory about scientific method and about human knowing which is open to criticism. Heelan here criticises the following points arising out of the philosophy of complementarity: psycho-physical parallelism; the view that quantum mechanical properties are to be defined classically; and the perturbation theory of measurement. In the course of the criticism, he elaborates the distinction between two types of concepts with different logical structures; viz., operational or observational concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of appearance or utility to us, and explanatory concepts which state a similarity between things judged on the basis of a self-defining set of different relations between things. Heelan thus shows how a physical concept is definable by any appropriate measuring-process. The description of the measuring­process and, hence, the definition of the physical property involve the two classes of concepts described above, but in different ways. Thus one may regard the Indeterminacy Relations, not as stating limi­tations of our knowledge, but as describing more exactly the behaviour of individual systems.
This chapter contains a study of Heisenberg's views of the ontological content of quantum mechanics from I925 until the present day. During the quantum revolution of I925, he began by accepting a Berkeley-type empiricism in which the reality of a quantum mechanical system was reduced to that of a set of observation events, which were, however, acausally connected and in consequence did not constitute a stable phenomenal object of experimental knowledge. After 1955, he professed a modified form of Kantian philosophy whose starting point was the existence of universal and necessary scientific laws. Those universal and necessary scientific laws from which Kant started have been shown to belong only to restricted domains of intuitive experience (the domain of everyday life and classical physics). Heisenberg defines noumenal reality as the object of an intellectual intuition (episteme) which, however, is a kind of knowledge we do not possess. We know noumenal reality only through symbols in an intellectually patterned experience. There are two kinds of noumenal reality: there is the thing-in-itself which is the correlate of the phenomenal object, and there is the dunamis (or Aristotelian potentia or objective tendency) which is the correlate of the quantum mechanical system (e.g., elementary particle, atom, etc.). The latter is the noumenal correlate of the phenomenal or experienced union of subject and object taking place in the act of observation. The importance of universal symmetries in the expression of general laws of nature is stressed by Heisenberg, and these constitute for him the true basis for transcendental philosophy.