The Metasemantics of Quantum Mechanics

Iulian D. Toader

This book concerns the metasemantics of quantum mechanics (QM). Roughly, it pursues an investigation at the intersection of philosophy of physics and philosophy of language, and it offers a critical analysis of rival explanations of the semantic facts of standard QM. Two problems for such explanations are discussed: categoricity and permanence. New results include 1) a reconstruction of Einstein's incompleteness argument, which concludes that a local, separable, and categorical QM cannot exist, 2) a reinterpretation of Bohr's principle of correspondence, grounded in the principle of permanence, 3) a meaning-variance argument for quantum logic, which follows a line of critical reflections initiated by Weyl, and 4) an argument for semantic indeterminacy leveled against inferentialism about QM, inspired by Carnap's work in the philosophy of classical logic.

Alexander H Klotz

Peter Verheyen

Quantum mechanics: Are we seeing reality as it is? Dr Peter Verheyen from the Sola Society and Academy at Vienna University examines whether quantum mechanics and information serve as the fundamental descriptions of reality. Anton Zeilinger, Alain Aspect, and John F. Clauser were awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to Quantum Mechanics, establishing QM as the foundation of reality. ‘Einstein was wrong, God plays dice, Quantum Mechanics rules.’

C. Hillis Kaiser

Dorit Aharonov, Umesh V. Vazirani

Quantum computation teaches us that quantum mechanics exhibits exponential complexity. We argue that the standard scientific paradigm of "predict and verify" cannot be applied to testing quantum mechanics in this limit of high complexity. We describe how QM can be tested in this regime by extending the usual scientific paradigm to include {\it interactive experiments}.

HOWARD STEIN