In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science.
Abstract: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science.
The Critique of the Quantum Power of Judgement analyzes the a priori principles which underlie the empirical knowledge provided by quantum theory. In contrast to other transcendental approaches to quantum physics, none of the transcendental principles established by Kant is modified in order to cope with the new epistemological situation that arises with the asumption of the quantum postulate. Rather, by considering Bohr’s views, it is argued that classical concepts provide the mathematical formalism of quantum theory with physical reference through symbolic analogies in the strict Kantian sense. The main result of the investigation is the determination of the highest principle under which quantum objects are subsumed. This principle states that the conditions of the possibility of the systematic unity of contextual experience are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of quantum objects. Upon this principle rests the possibility of any a priori synthetic knowledge of quantum objects. Therefore, the Critique of the Quantum Power of Judgement yields the prolegomena to any future quantum metaphysics.
Kant’s philosophy of science has been applied to quantum physics since the time when Niels Bohr formulated his interpretation of quantum physics. In recent years various Kantian interpretations of quantum physics have been put forward. One aspect that still needs further exploration is what a Kantian approach to the epistemic status of quantum entities would entail. In this paper a new kind of judgment consistent with Kant’s system, called a transcendental judgment, able to account for the real existence of quantum entities in the pre-measurement phase is discussed. The advantage of this kind of judgment is that it allows for a fine-tuning of the Kantian system to account for the discovery of quantum entities that are known to exist but whose existence can epistemologically not be accounted for in traditional Kantian philosophy. With this new kind of judgment, a wider range of possible judgments becomes available which can determine the epistemological status of concepts/ideas/theories quite carefully, discriminating between different kinds of knowledge claims.
For Kant causality is an a priori category of the understanding, a necessary condition for the possibility of any experience. Later Wittgenstein’s philosophy rejects transcendentalism. We can only speak of causes and effects if in some basic situations, or ‘language games’, we already treat some things as causes of what happens. Since the notion of cause becomes meaningful only within a language game, it is not unambiguous. Quantum causal language games presuppose the use of quantum theory. We treat the latter as Wittgenstein’s grammar of a quantum form of life’, or rule (norm), anchored in its applications — quantum phenomena as language games. Quantum correlations are often interpreted as a manifestation of the nonlocality of quantum mechanics. This is a view of quantum phenomena from the perspective of classical physics. Our contextual point of view rejects the nonlocality of quantum theory in the sense of instantaneous causal influence at a distance. But it does not admit its locality in the sense of classical causality either. We introduce the notion of quantum causality which allows us to treat quantum correlations as local, but context-dependent. Their formal cause is an entangled wave function. Any particular quantum correlation, identifiable in a context of its observation as a result of the wave function reduction, post factum can be treated as a classical causal correlation. From the point of view of the proposed contextual quantum realism, epistemology is secondary, and ontology is sensitive to context. Quantum correlations exist (are real) before application of the theory, independently of their identification (description, measurement), but have no identity, which appears only as a result of application of the theory and their identification in the context. In other words, they are real, but not pre-determined, not autonomous.
Kantian philosophy provided a strong foundation for classical Newtonian mechanics; however, it is difficult to fully account for the features of quantum mechanics. Functionalized and structured a priori knowledge provides only an additional explanation in terms of the hierarchy and role of knowledge; nevertheless, it does not fundamentally alter Kant’s traditional concept, and the transformed a priori knowledge still fails to reveal the state of knowledge in quantum mechanics. Therefore, this chapter is going to construct a new notion of “trans-empirical” that absorbs both the meanings of transcendental and a priori and the meaning of experience to understand quantum mechanics, so that trans-empirical is itself capable of being linked to experience. The trans-empirical refers to something that surpasses experience but also connects it and enables it. This inherent tension between surpassing and connecting experience is what allows objects in quantum mechanics and superstring theory to possess a trans-empirical feature. Different quantum states correspond to distinct quantum realities, and quantum reality is trans-empirical reality, that is, between the possible world and the real world. A single measurement of a quantum system provides only a partial glimpse of its overall reality. It is the whole of the various realities that completely describes the quantum reality. The basic framework of the trans-empirical reality is: Different trans-empirical concepts + perceptual material, perceptual models → different scientific models (rational models) → different scientific realities (trans-empirical realities). In addition, this chapter presents the model of trans-empirical cognition: Pre-experience → pre-understanding → trans-empirical ideas → perceptual knowledge → trans-empirical concepts → rational knowledge → post-experience.
In this paper, I argue that Heisenberg's mature philosophy of quantum mechanics must be understood in the context of his epistemological project to reinterpret and redefine Kant's notion of the a priori. After discussions with Weizsäcker and Hermann in Leipzig in the 1930s, Heisenberg attempted to ground his interpretation of quantum mechanics on what might be termed a ‘practical’ transformation of Kantian philosophy. Taking as his starting point, Bohr's doctrine of the indispensability of classical concepts, Heisenberg argued that concepts such as space, time and causality can be regarded as ‘practically a priori’, in so far as they remain the conditions for the possibility of experience and even of ‘objective reality’, though they are not universal and necessary in a strictly Kantian sense. We cannot avoid using classical concepts in the description of experiments in quantum theory, despite the fact that there are limits to their applicability. Such concepts are, for Heisenberg, historically contingent, yet indispensable in our time, because we have no other language through which we can describe and conceive of the interaction between ‘object’ and ‘measuring device’.