Modern physics is situated on the fine line between scientific research and an attempt to answer metaphysical questions. Contemporary scholars such as Henry Stapp and Roger Penrose attempt to create an ontological interpretation of Schrödinger's equation in superposition state and its reduction or collapse to classical state. In this short essay I will try to explore how Immanuel Kant's metaphysics and the concept of noumena can be possibly integrated with quantum physics and Schrödinger's equation.
Modern physics is situated on the fine line between scientific research and an attempt to answer metaphysical questions. Contemporary scholars such as Henry Stapp and Roger Penrose attempt to create an ontological interpretation of Schrödinger's equation in superposition state and its reduction or collapse to classical state. In this short essay I will try to explore how Immanuel Kant's metaphysics and the concept of noumena can be possibly integrated with quantum physics and Schrödinger's equation.
For Bohr quantum mechanics is complete. It expresses all that can be said about the atomic world, which he regards as a newly discovered and separate ontological component of reality, operating at the Planck scale, and describable only with a separate physics, namely, quantum mechanics. The classical world, in contrast, represents its binary and symbiotic counterpart, which is also ontologically substantive, but operates according to 'classical concepts'. The different physics of each component indicates a different ontology, the classical one is accessible to us, as we are classical objects, where the Planck scale does not apply, while the other is not. The measurement problem cannot therefore be solved through the discovery of hidden variables as these are classical in nature and therefore ineffective in explaining the quantum world. The measurement problem is therefore not due to epistemological limitations but emerges directly from a 'two worlds' dualism. Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation has therefore been erroneously misunderstood as a positivist retreat rather than as a view of reality proposing an ontological structure which is dualistic. l then propose similarities between Bohr and a ‘two worlds’ view of Kant, where noumena is an ontology which is inherently unknowable as it is devoid of a priori agents, much as the quantum world is unknowable as it is devoid of Bohr's classical concepts. However, just as classical concepts in Bohr are crucial in constituting classical reality, a priori intuitions and concepts in Kant are crucial in constituting phenomena, which are real ontological objects and not just appearances. The noumenal and quantum realms are therefore both substantive, but impossible to investigate. The phenomenal and classical worlds are also substantive. They are where objects and therefore meaning condenses. They are therefore open to our investigations.
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed attempt to force onto it a wrong conceptual scheme, wanting at all costs to think about the objects of the theory as, precisely, objects, i.e., entities having continuously actual spatiotemporal properties. This too restrictive spatiotemporal scheme is most probably at the heart of the problem, as also underlined by the Einsteinian revolution, but then what could be an alternative? Many thinkers have suggested that we must surrender to the fact that our physical world is one of immanent powers and potencies. Aristotle did so ante quantum litteram, followed by scholars like Heisenberg, Primas, Shimony, Piron, Kastner, Kauffman, de Ronde, just to name a few, including the authors, who were both students of Piron in Geneva. However, if on the one hand a potentiality ontology puts the accent on the processes of change, responsible for the incessant shifts between actual and potential properties, on the other hand it does not tell what these changes are all about. In other words, the metaphysical question remains of identifying the nature of the bearer of these potencies, or potentialities, and of the entities that can actualize them. It is the purpose of the present article to emphasize that the above question has found a possible answer in the recent Conceptuality Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which we believe offers the missing ontology and metaphysics that can make the theory fully intelligible, and even intuitive.
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.
Instead of either formulating new metaphysical images (as realists would do) or rejecting any metaphysical attempt (as empiricists would do), the case of quantum mechanics might well require from us a complete redefinition of the nature and task of metaphysics.The sought redefinition can be performed in the spirit of Kant, according to whom metaphysics is the discipline of the boundaries of human knowledge.This can be called a "reflective" conception of metaphysics.In this paper, each one of the most popular "interpretations" of quantum mechanics is shown to be naturally associated with a variety of Kant-like reflective metaphysics.Then, the two major "paradoxes" of quantum mechanics (the measurement problem and the EPR correlations) are reformulated by way of this reflective attitude, and they are thereby "dissolved".Along with this perspective, quantum mechanics becomes one of the most elegant and understandable theories of the history of physics in addition of being one of the most efficient.The only point that must be clarified is why it looks culturally so difficult to accept a reflective and non-ontological standpoint on physical theories.
Quantum theory, particularly with its concepts of indeterminacy and superposition, demands of philosophers of science a profound review and a complete redefinition of the foundation of the notion of representation. This review has significant implications for assessing the Kantian heritage, especially for those among us who recognize the advances of the transcendental approach over realist and empiricist perspectives in epistemology. Kant endeavored to establish a foundation for the notion of representation consistent with the physics of his time. Today, as inheritors of Kant’s legacy in the philosophy of science, we face the challenge of establishing a new foundation for the idea of representation that aligns with the principles of contemporary science. In his Progress of Metaphysics, as well as in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant distinguishes between analogical (symbolic) schematism and real (transcendental) schematism. My aim in this work is to explore the notion of analogical schematism for evaluating the content of extra-empirical concepts in contemporary physical theories, where intuition proves to be intrinsically indeterminate.
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.