This paper rejects a widely-held but ultimately untenable semantic presupposition in the philosophy of quantum mechanics: that the significance of the modal vocabulary of quantum mechanics (including quantum state ascriptions) is ultimately to be understood in terms of denotation. By instead invoking a Sellarsian approach to modal vocabulary, and a Brandomian approach to meaning-conferral, this paper reconciles three apparently incompatible readings of the quantum state: nomological‑modal, pragmatic‑advisory, and descriptive-denotational. In doing so, it allows us to hold on to the significant insights that each of these readings provides into the worlds modeled by quantum mechanics.
This paper rejects a widely-held but ultimately untenable semantic presupposition in the philosophy of quantum mechanics: that the significance of the modal vocabulary of quantum mechanics (including quantum state ascriptions) is ultimately to be understood in terms of denotation. By instead invoking a Sellarsian approach to modal vocabulary, and a Brandomian approach to meaning-conferral, this paper reconciles three apparently incompatible readings of the quantum state: nomological‑modal, pragmatic‑advisory, and descriptive-denotational. In doing so, it allows us to hold on to the significant insights that each of these readings provides into the worlds modeled by quantum mechanics.
This book is about how to understand quantum mechanics by means of a modal interpretation. Modal interpretations provide a general framework within which quantum mechanics can be considered as a theory that describes reality in terms of physical systems possessing definite properties. Quantum mechanics is standardly understood to be a theory about probabilities with which measurements have outcomes. Modal interpretations are relatively new attempts to present quantum mechanics as a theory which, like other physical theories, describes an observer-independent reality. In this book, Pieter Vermaas summarises the results of this work. The book will be of great value to undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in philosophy of science, and physics departments with an interest in learning about modal interpretations of quantum mechanics.
This article presents a critical–propositional examination of the foundational bibliography of quantum mechanics in confrontation with the Theory of Objectivity (TO). Drawing on the classical works of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Born, Dirac, von Neumann, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen, and Bell, the study investigates the extent to which the conceptual architecture of quantum mechanics can be reinterpreted under the modal discipline of TO. The paper argues that quantum mechanics, while extraordinarily successful as a mathematical and empirical framework for describing observable physical regimes, does not by itself exhaust the ontological conditions of intelligibility of the universe. In response, the article articulates the quantum bibliography with the foundational bibliography of TO, its recent developments in modal ontology and testability, and its supporting and dialogical bibliography in physics, cosmology, and philosophy of science. Special attention is given to possible compatibilities and points of tension between quantum theory and the Seven Absolute Truths of TO, as well as to the cosmogenic theorem, the phenomenic elements, the Inducer Effects, and the cosmological Eras of the Theory of Objectivity. In this framework, quantization, superposition, measurement, entanglement, decoherence, and the quantum vacuum are reread as phenomenic manifestations that may be disciplined by a deeper modal grammar. The article further proposes that the transcendent element, in TO terms, may be interpreted as knowledge or information produced in atomic relations and equivalent to atomic radiations. From this perspective, quantum mechanics is not rejected, but reinscribed within a broader ontological horizon in which relation, boundary, observation, and transcendence acquire foundational significance. By combining philosophical analysis, comparative ontology, and dialogue with contemporary observational physics, this study contributes to the development of a modal and testable research program in which the Theory of Objectivity serves as a discipline of intelligibility for quantum phenomena rather than as a mere external critique. Authors’ note: This article benefited from ChatGPT’s analytical support in bibliographic organization, comparative structuring, and the systematization of points of compatibility, tension, and testability. Keywords Theory of Objectivity; quantum mechanics; modal ontology; foundational physics; philosophy of quantum mechanics; Bell inequalities; EPR paradox; quantum vacuum; phenomenic elements; Inducer Effects; cosmogenic theorem; cosmological Eras; relational ontology; testability; contemporary cosmology
In the present paper I describe a general formal semantic scheme for the interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) , and on the basis of this scheme I examine the modal interpretation of QM — both the Copenhagen and the anti-Copenhagen variants — proposed by van Fraassen [19, 20, 21], This is intended to be a fragment of a larger work [12] which additionally investigates a number of closely related interpretations, including ones proposed by Bub and Demopoulos [1, 2, 3, 4], Fine [5, 6], and Krips [16, 17]. Formal semantically speaking (see, e.g., Thomason [18]), a logic L may be characterized as an ordered pair <SYN,SEM>, where SYN is the underlying syntax (language) of L, and SEM is the semantics of L, which consists of a class of semantic assignments on SYN.
In this final part I analyse the modal interpretations from a more philosophical point of view. In Chapter 12 I start by arguing that modal interpretations describe noumenal states of affairs and that therefore metaphysically tenable interpretations need only to meet the criteria of Consistency and Internal Completeness. Then I analyse the relations between properties, states and outcomes of measurements in the modal description of reality. I end by discussing how modal interpretations, when restricted to the description of measurement outcomes, recover the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. Chapter 13 concerns the relations between the properties ascribed to composite systems and subsystems. I show that the property ascriptions of the bi and spectral modal interpretations can be characterised as holistic and non-reductionistic, whereas the property ascription of the atomic modal interpretation is non-holistic and to a large extent reductionistic. I argue that notwithstanding the lack of reductionism, the bi and spectral modal interpretations are empirically adequate and metaphysically tenable. I also discuss the possibility of saving the metaphysical tenability of the atomic modal interpretation by taking holistic properties as dispositional properties. In Chapter 14 I give a survey of the possibilities and impossibilities of modal interpretations and in Chapter 15 I end with general conclusions.
The aim of this paper is to introduce a new member of the family of the modal interpretations of quantum mechanics. In this modal-Hamiltonian interpretation, the Hamiltonian of the quantum system plays a decisive role in the property-ascription rule that selects the definite-valued observables whose possible values become actual. We show that this interpretation is effective for solving the measurement problem, both in its ideal and its non-ideal versions, and we argue for the physical relevance of the property-ascription rule by applying it to well-known physical situations. Moreover, we explain how this interpretation supplies a description of the elemental categories of the ontology referred to by the theory, where quantum systems turn out to be bundles of possible properties.
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.