The focus of the article is the question of the nature of contextuality in quantum phenomena. What underlies it: normative procedures of description dictated by rules and language, or is reality itself structured procedurally? At the core of Igor Prisyazhnuk's contextual quantum realism lies the distinction between the ideal and the real. Quantum uncertainty is interpreted by him as a situation where the rule has not yet been applied to the object, and the measurement context merely creates conditions in which the object can be identified. This allows for the avoidance of both subjectivism and flat objectivism, while maintaining the conception of a reality that objectively exists, yet is sensitive to context. Prisyazhnuk draws a line between sequential contextualism (the Bohr-Benoit line) and what he calls ontological correlationalism, classifying the latter under agency realism by Karen Barad. The methodology is based on a comparative analysis of two philosophical traditions concerning quantum contextuality. First, the foundations of each position and key concepts are reconstructed to reveal the divergence: Prisyazhnuk's categorical dualism versus Simondonian ontogenesis. Then this divergence is tested against the material of quantum uncertainty and entanglement. The goal is to understand which strategy more consistently explains the nature of quantum reality, avoiding relativism and anthropocentrism. The comparison is made along three parameters: the relationship between reality and its description, the status of the subject and norms, and the explanatory power of the conceptual apparatus in the context of experimental data. Viewing this through the lens of Simondon reveals a different ontological perspective. Quantum contextuality ceases to be a relation between norm and reality; it becomes a phase of individuation. The measurement situation appears not as the application of a rule, but as the resolution of a metastable state. In this state, the system and the instrument do not yet exist separately; they exist in an inseparable potential being, and only in the act of measurement do their outlines emerge. The comparison of the two approaches raises questions about ontological depth. Does Prisyazhnuk's normative structure provide the tools necessary to explain quantum entanglement and the emergence of the world, or does the Simondonian model, with its transduction, metastability, and associated environment, offer a more coherent description of the formation of a quantum event, avoiding anthropocentrism?
The focus of the article is the question of the nature of contextuality in quantum phenomena. What underlies it: normative procedures of description dictated by rules and language, or is reality itself structured procedurally? At the core of Igor Prisyazhnuk's contextual quantum realism lies the distinction between the ideal and the real. Quantum uncertainty is interpreted by him as a situation where the rule has not yet been applied to the object, and the measurement context merely creates conditions in which the object can be identified. This allows for the avoidance of both subjectivism and flat objectivism, while maintaining the conception of a reality that objectively exists, yet is sensitive to context. Prisyazhnuk draws a line between sequential contextualism (the Bohr-Benoit line) and what he calls ontological correlationalism, classifying the latter under agency realism by Karen Barad. The methodology is based on a comparative analysis of two philosophical traditions concerning quantum contextuality. First, the foundations of each position and key concepts are reconstructed to reveal the divergence: Prisyazhnuk's categorical dualism versus Simondonian ontogenesis. Then this divergence is tested against the material of quantum uncertainty and entanglement. The goal is to understand which strategy more consistently explains the nature of quantum reality, avoiding relativism and anthropocentrism. The comparison is made along three parameters: the relationship between reality and its description, the status of the subject and norms, and the explanatory power of the conceptual apparatus in the context of experimental data. Viewing this through the lens of Simondon reveals a different ontological perspective. Quantum contextuality ceases to be a relation between norm and reality; it becomes a phase of individuation. The measurement situation appears not as the application of a rule, but as the resolution of a metastable state. In this state, the system and the instrument do not yet exist separately; they exist in an inseparable potential being, and only in the act of measurement do their outlines emerge. The comparison of the two approaches raises questions about ontological depth. Does Prisyazhnuk's normative structure provide the tools necessary to explain quantum entanglement and the emergence of the world, or does the Simondonian model, with its transduction, metastability, and associated environment, offer a more coherent description of the formation of a quantum event, avoiding anthropocentrism?
Amid the wide variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the notion of a fully coherent ontological interpretation has seen a promising evolution over the last few decades. Despite this progress, however, the old dualistic categorical constraints of subjectivity and objectivity, correlate with the metrically restricted definition of local and global, have remained largely in place – a reflection of the broader, persistent inheritance of these comfortable strictures throughout the evolution of modern science. If one traces this inheritance back to its ancient roots in Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that the coherence, scientific utility, and historical durability of the various natural philosophies that followed have been directly proportional to their commitment, tacit or explicit, to object-oriented realism. As Simondon might put it, it is a commitment to the primacy of individuated substance over the process of individuation. For Whitehead, it is the misplaced assimilation of becoming to being, of potentiality to actuality. Quantum mechanics has challenged this commitment with a combined breadth and depth of force that far exceeds any other theory in the history of science. The theory’s objectively demonstrable empirical application is manifest only by way of a fundamentally subjective, context-dependent mechanism of measurement. More compelling still, actual system states are always actualizations of locally contextualized yet globally conditioned potential system states, such that “globally objective” reality is no longer merely the object of local measurement, but also its product. Thus, any coherent, ontological interpretation of quantum theory must include a conceptual framework by which objectivity and subjectivity, actuality and potentiality, global and local, being and becoming, individuated fact and process of individuation, are no longer understood as merely epistemic, mutually exclusive category pairs descriptive of an already extant, closed reality – but rather as mutually implicative ontological categories explicative of an ontogenetic, open reality-in-process.
K. Barad proposes "agential realism" as a unified approach to natural and social phenomena. The position is inspired by quantum mechanics and in particular the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Barad also sees similarities between her approach, N. Bohr's view and C. Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics. In our view, agential realism is a kind of ontological correlationism, not a realism. The analogy with the Bohr and Rovelli approaches is only partial. Agential realism is a wrong interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is also unsuitable for social theorizing, for which taking into account the sensitivity of ontology to the context is fundamental. As an alternative, we propose a contextual quantum realism that rejects substantive dualisms (as does Barad), but at the same time accepts the categorical dualism of the real and the ideal. Our approach also allows one to better understand Bohr's position and to correct Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics.
I suggest a contextual realist interpretation of Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics. The principal point is a correct understanding of the concept of reality and taking into account the categorical distinction between the ideal and the real. Within my interpretation, consciousness of the observer does not play any metaphysical role. The proposed approach can also be understood as a return to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, corrected within the framework of contextual realism. The contextual realism allows one to get rid of the metaphysical problems encountered by various interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the relational one. A wave function neither literally reflects an “exterior reality”, nor is it merely a predictive mathematical tool. In particular, an entangled wave function can be viewed as the formal cause of quantum correlations whose reality is contextual. The reduction of a wave function is not a real physical process. And there are no autonomous quantum events which would be different from the facts of their representation. The quantum measurement problem results from a confusion between the categories of the ideal and the real. It is dissolved logically. The quantum theory plays the role of a Wittgensteinian rule (norm), “measuring” physical reality within a language game of its application.
What does quantum physics tell us about the nature of reality, specifically the parts of reality we do not directly perceive called hidden variables? One may think it could tell us a lot because of our enhanced technological sensing abilities that delve into the realms that quantum physics covers so well. Surprisingly, it seems to surround us in a deeper mystery rather than reveal more of nature's secrets. It seems that we cannot escape from philosophical consideration when dealing with what is hidden in quantum physics. In Part I we will look at how Epistemology and Ontology bear upon Hidden Variables. In Part II we will consider Hidden Variables in the light of Contextuality, and Non-Classicality. Inevitably questions of subjectivity and objectivity arise in dealing with states of observation. How should we think about these states? Perhaps it is a question of the meaning associated with our knowledge of a state-that is, a question of ontology or epistemology. The issue of ontic and epistemic states is particularly important when considering hidden variables in quantum physics because, as one may argue, the interpretation of quantum states as either ontic or epistemic will naturally lead to different assumptions about how reality is constructed; if it is constructed or not. It also raises the question of what attributes we are able to observe simultaneously and that brings contextuality into the discussion. If it turns out that reality is constructed contextually what does that imply about ontological realism? If on the other hand reality is constructed non-contextually what does that imply about ontological realism? Many implications can arise when considering these questions from a quantum physical point of view. In this paper I shall discuss how quantum physics provides some answers to these questions by considering quantum physical states and their measurements.
A realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is proposed - Contextual Quantum Realism (CQR) - according to which there exists a categorical distinction between the ideal (theory, observation instrument) and the real (quantum physical systems, properties), and, consequently, quantum ontology is context-sensitive. CQR is compared with QBism and Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM), both of which also claim to offer realist interpretations. However, both approaches conflate the ideal and the real, thereby introducing an anti-realist dimension. RQM is an objectivist (physicalist) interpretation that naturalizes epistemic concepts, whereas QBism is subjectivist (phenomenological). RQM and QBism share a common presupposition of (post-)Modern philosophy - namely, the reduction of reality to objectivity - which CQR explicitly rejects.
In this paper we attempt to analyze the physical and philosophical meaning of quantum contextuality. In the first part we will argue that a general confusion within the literature comes from the improper "scrambling" of two different meanings of quantum contextuality. The first one is related to an epistemic interpretation of contextuality, introduced by Bohr, which stresses the incompatibility (or complementarity) of quantum measurements. The second, is related to an ontic notion of contextuality, exposed through the Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem, which focuses on the constraints to discuss about actual (definite valued) properties within the orthodox formalism of QM. We will show how these two notions have been scrambled together creating an "omelette of contextuality" which has been fully widespread through a popularized "epistemic explanation" of the KS theorem according to which: The outcome of the observable A when mea- sured together with B or together with C will necessarily differ in case [A,B] = [A,C] = 0, and [B,C] ̸= 0. We will show why this statement is not only improperly scrambling epistemic and ontic perspectives, but is also physically and philosophically meaningless. In the second part of the paper, we will analyse the relation between ‘classical contexts’ and QM. We will show that three accepted presuppositions found within the orthodox literature are, in general, false. Namely: (i) that quantum contextuality does not preclude an objective description of physical reality, (ii) that the choice of a context (or basis) restores a classical description of reality, and (iii) that the choice of a (classical) context is a necessary condition for accounting for empirical statements in QM.