In course of the development of modern science, inadequacy of classical logic and Eastern philosophy have generally been associated only with quantum mechanics in particular, notably by Schroedinger, Finkelstein and Zeilinger among others. Our motive is to showcase a deviation from this prototypical association. So, we consider the equation of motion of a classical harmonic oscillator, and demonstrate how our habit of writing the general solution, by applying the principle of superposition, can not be explained by remaining within the bounds of classical logic. The the law of identity gets violated. The law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle fail to hold strictly throughout the whole process of reasoning consequently leading to a decision problem where we can not decide whether these two 'laws' hold or not. We discuss how we, by habit, apply our intuition to write down the general solution. Such intuitive steps of reasoning, if formalized in terms of propositions, result in a manifestation of the inadequacy of classical logic. In view of our discussion, we conclude that the middle way (Mulamadhyamakakarika), a feature of Eastern philosophy, founds the basis of human reasoning. The essence of the middle way can be realized through self-inquiry (Atmavichar), another crucial feature of Eastern philosophy, which however is exemplified by our exposition of the concerned problem. From the Western point of view, our work showcases an example of Hilbert's axiomatic approach to deal with the principle of superposition in the context of the classical harmonic oscillator. In the process, it becomes a manifestation of Brouwer's views concerning the role of intuition in human reasoning and inadequacy of classical logic which were very much influenced by, if not founded upon, Eastern philosophy.
In course of the development of modern science, inadequacy of classical logic and Eastern philosophy have generally been associated only with quantum mechanics in particular, notably by Schroedinger, Finkelstein and Zeilinger among others. Our motive is to showcase a deviation from this prototypical association. So, we consider the equation of motion of a classical harmonic oscillator, and demonstrate how our habit of writing the general solution, by applying the principle of superposition, can not be explained by remaining within the bounds of classical logic. The the law of identity gets violated. The law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle fail to hold strictly throughout the whole process of reasoning consequently leading to a decision problem where we can not decide whether these two 'laws' hold or not. We discuss how we, by habit, apply our intuition to write down the general solution. Such intuitive steps of reasoning, if formalized in terms of propositions, result in a manifestation of the inadequacy of classical logic. In view of our discussion, we conclude that the middle way (Mulamadhyamakakarika), a feature of Eastern philosophy, founds the basis of human reasoning. The essence of the middle way can be realized through self-inquiry (Atmavichar), another crucial feature of Eastern philosophy, which however is exemplified by our exposition of the concerned problem. From the Western point of view, our work showcases an example of Hilbert's axiomatic approach to deal with the principle of superposition in the context of the classical harmonic oscillator. In the process, it becomes a manifestation of Brouwer's views concerning the role of intuition in human reasoning and inadequacy of classical logic which were very much influenced by, if not founded upon, Eastern philosophy.
According to philosophy of logic,quantum can be considered as a non-classical characterized by non-distributivity,and it takes scientific inference actually used by scientists of quantum mechanics as real prototypes or basis.Hillary Putnam concluded that logic can be revised globally due to reasons in terms of generation of quantum logic;while at same time he claimed that quantum logical connectives retained their classical meanings,which made him fall into a dilemma.After reexamining empirical reasons and the revision of argument on basis of several different interpretations of quantum mechanics,the authors of this paper found that metaphysical considerations are not negligible.And paper proposed that Correspondence Principle had methodological effect of resolving Putnam's Dilemma,and could explain reasonably continuity and innovation of quantum to classical logic.
In this paper we consider the phenomenon of superpositions in quantum mechanics and suggest a way to deal with the idea in a logical setting from a syntactical point of view, that is, as subsumed in the language of the formalism, and not semantically. We restrict the discussion to the propositional level only. Then, after presenting the motivations and a possible world semantics, the formalism is outlined and we also consider within this schema the claim that superpositions may involve contradictions, as in the case of the Schrödinger's cat, which (it is usually said) is both alive and dead. We argue that this claim is a misreading of the quantum case. Finally, we sketch a new form of quantum logic that involves three kinds of negations and present the relationships among them. The paper is a first approach to the subject, introducing some main guidelines to be developed by a `syntactical' logical approach to quantum superpositions.
In order to solve the problem of which is the real logic of Quantum Mechanics (QM), we suggest to study the mutual relationships between the physical theory (as a whole, that is both its experimental part and its theoretical part), its mathematics and its logic. That results to be a more general problem than what is considered by traditional studies on Quantum Logic (QL). These studies focus attention on the problem of the relationship between the experimental part of the physical theory and only its mathematics, from which logic is then derived. The new approach, that we suggest, generalises the interpretation that one of us (A. D.) successfully tested on the foundations of classical physical theories. The foundations of a theory are interpreted in terms of two options on the kind of mathematics, either classical one or constructive one, and the kind of logic, either classical logic or intuitionistic logic. It is remarkable that each theory making use of intuitionistic logic – i. e. L. Carnot’s classical mechanics, S. Carnot’s thermodynamics, Lobacevskij’s non-Euclidean geometry is organised in order to solve an universal problem (expressed by a double negated sentence), rather than in an entirely deductive way; hence, a non-classical logic does not belong exclusively to QM. From an historical and foundational analysis about QM, we conclude that in QM it is the law of double negation and not modular law (introduced by Birkhoff and von Neumann without giving physical evidence to it) which fails, i. e. which represents the true difference between Classical Logic (CL) and QL. We have looked for previous works on QL supporting our suggestion; in the past Destouches-Fevrier (1948), Fine (1974), Bell-Hallett (1981), Gauthier (1983), Adelman-Corbett (1995) already defended this thesis on the relevance of double negation law for QL. Under this light, QL results to have the same logic of a classical theory organised in a problematic manner. Hence, QM has to be referred to intuitionistic logic, in the same way every theory which is developed around a fundamental problem, expressed by a double negated sentence, does. In particular, by following the founder of intuitionism, Brouwer, we reject the identification of intuitionistic logic with an entirely deductive system; rather, the logical system of QL, as a theory, is organised in such a way to put a crucial problem to be solved. In agreement with this kind of organisation, among the several QM formulations we choose Heisenberg’s formulation, which was ignored by previous authors on QL. This formulation is aimed to solve the problem of quantum measurement, that originates the uncertainty methodological principle. Moreover, it is remarkable that it makes use of an operational mathematics (discrete matrices only). We interpret its characteristic arguing about its principal problem through double negated sentences; it results to be a moving from arguments belonging to non-classical logic expressed by a double negated sentence to the recognition of a suitable mathematics for QM formulation. In sum, QL shows how it is possible to state the relationship between QM and mathematics. This point has been almost ignored by the most traditional approaches to QL, which rather drew it from an a priori mathematics of QM (commonly, Hilbert space). As a verification of our approach, we show that even both Lobachevskij’s geometry and S. Carnot’s thermodynamics argued in order to achieve mathematical formulas expressing the content of the basic double negated sentences of respective theory. In the same way the recent book on QM by T. F. Jordan formalised his matrix mechanics. 1. Logic in classical physics and in Quantum Mechanics An historical analysis of Quantum Mechanics (QM) shows that there were at the origin of the theory two distinct formulations: Matrix Mechanics (Heisenberg, 1925) and Wave Mechanics (Schroedinger, 1926). Although Dirac subsumed these two formulations in a comprehensive mathematical framework (Hilbert space), we think that the organisation of the principles is different in Matrix Mechanics from that in Wave Mechanics, and this difference implies different logics. So we think that in order to characterise the logic of QM it is necessary to distinguish between this two formulations. In Matrix Mechanics, Heisenberg’s basic idea was to explain atomic spectra not in terms of atomic orbits (as Old Quantum Theory tried to make), but only by means of the study of experimental data; i. e., frequencies and intensities of light both emitted and absorbed by matter. Through a
In this paper we consider the phenomenon of superpositions in quantum mechanics and suggest a way to deal with the idea in a logical setting from a syntactical point of view, that is, as subsumed in the language of the formalism, and not semantically. We restrict the discussion to the propositional level only. Then, after presenting the motivations and a possible world semantics, the formalism is outlined and we also consider within this schema the claim that superpositions may involve contradictions, as in the case of the Schrödinger's cat, which (it is usually said) is both alive and dead. We argue that this claim is a misreading of the quantum case. Finally, we sketch a new form of quantum logic that involves three kinds of negations and present the relationships among them. The paper is a first approach to the subject, introducing some main guidelines to be developed by a `syntactical' logical approach to quantum superpositions.
In the present paper, the decision problem of the Schrödinger equation (asking whether or not a given Hamiltonian operator has the nonempty solution set) is represented as a logical statement. As it is shown in the paper, the law of excluded middle would be applicable to the introduced statement if and only if quantum fundamentalism (asserting that everything in the universe is ultimately describable in quantum-mechanical terms) held. But, since the decision problem of the Schrödinger equation is in general undecidable, such a statement is allowed to be other than true or false, explicitly, it may fail to have truth values at all. This makes possible to abandon the law of excluded middle together with quantum fundamentalism in the proposed intuitionistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In this article we try to justify a way of looking for an alternative approach to quantum mechanics based on a non-classical logic. The main motivation is both to accommodate a metaphysical view according to which quantum objects are non-individuals and to introduce, so to say, these objects within the formalism, for as we know, the usual formalism treats of states of quantum systems and not (directly) of quantum systems properly speaking. We consider two specific questions related to quantum theory, namely, entanglement and the indiscernibility of quanta. Our way of looking to these concepts motivate us to construct a metaphysical view according to which quantum objects do not present identity criterion (they are ‘non-individuals’), and then we try to construct a quantum theory based on such a view, which is grounded on a non-classical logic, termed non-reflexive. From the formal point of view, the main motivation comes from the fact that in using classical logic and classical set theory (such as ZFC), we are necessarily committed to individuals, and non-individuals can be considered only by assuming ‘strong’ symmetry principles, which mask the basic idea involving non-individuality. In the core of the article, due to questions of space, only the main philosophical arguments are presented, but in two appendixes we outline, firstly, quasi-set theory, the non-reflexive mathematical framework that sustain our view, and a bottom-top construction of a quantum mechanics based on quasi-set theory.