This essay for the inaugural issue of Technology and Language presents a research program for Quantum Hermeneutics which serves as a theory for the epistemology, methodology and ontology of quantum texts and their understanding. As opposed to the texts of classical science and in this regard more like the texts of the humanities, quantum texts require interpretation. But as opposed to the humanities, quantum text concerns trans-empirical experience of a trans-empirical world - the quantum text is written as scientific technology prompts quantum objects to reveal themselves as a readable text that requires interpretation.
This essay for the inaugural issue of Technology and Language presents a research program for Quantum Hermeneutics which serves as a theory for the epistemology, methodology and ontology of quantum texts and their understanding. As opposed to the texts of classical science and in this regard more like the texts of the humanities, quantum texts require interpretation. But as opposed to the humanities, quantum text concerns trans-empirical experience of a trans-empirical world - the quantum text is written as scientific technology prompts quantum objects to reveal themselves as a readable text that requires interpretation.
Following the first and second quantum revolutions, quantum information theory has expanded beyond the field of physics into numerous other interdisciplinary areas. This book provides a comprehensive philosophical exploration of quantum mechanics and quantum information. The author examines key concepts such as quantum reality, quantum entanglement, quantum information, the quantum world, quantum computing, and quantum matter, while also extending quantum mechanical theory to encompass phenomenology, hermeneutics, and trans- empirical philosophy. Drawing on Kant’s transcendental idealism and neo- Kantianism, the author introduces the concept of “trans-empirical”— that which transcends experience without abandoning it and which, in fact, enables it. The book skillfully demonstrates how trans- empirical reality and cognition offer valuable analytical frameworks for contemporary quantum philosophy. This work will appeal to scholars and graduate students in various disciplines, including the philosophy of science and technology, analytical philosophy, the philosophy of language, phenomenology, and hermeneutics.
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.
Abstract Interpretation usually applies to texts. Unlike discourses, which are rooted in concrete situations and surroundings to which demonstratives and other indexical terms refer, texts are to some degree decontextualized. A text addresses unknown audiences and frees itself from the conditions of its production, thus opening the possibility for various readings. Reading is receptive but not passive, and genuine reading is interpretive. The reader contributes by adopting, fixing the references, finding meaning for textual descriptions in his own comprehension, entering the world jointly opened by the text and his anticipation, thereby gaining an understanding of the text. Understanding, interpretation, and application are inseparable elements of a hermeneutical act.
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.
Whereas the technological applications of quantum mechanics are extraordinarily abundant, its ontological implications are very controversial. Not only did several interpretations of the original quantum formalism develop throughout the last century, but modifications of the primitive formalism were also proposed, introducing new relevant theoretical elements, which gave rise to very different quantum ontologies. This article highlights that the diversity of quantum ontologies reveals the impossibility of establishing an exclusive inference from the empirical success of a theory and its ontological truth. Since scientific objectifications in general —and those of quantum mechanics in particular— have a limited cognitive scope, they don’t allow choosing a specific interpretation of the theory among the many possible ones, so that meta-scientific criteria are required.