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arXiv:quant-ph/9701035

Comment on ``An Evolutionary Picture for Quantum Physics'' by Rudolf Haag

Walter Fusseder

Published Jan 27, 1997• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Widespread unjustified views on the role of the observer, the individuality of quantum processes, the relation between decoherence and irreversibility, Bell's quest for `beables', the direction of time, and the concept of experience are revealed, whereby a better understanding is achieved of what the evolutionary picture is all about and what is regarded as missing in already existing realistic pictures.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/9701035

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Widespread unjustified views on the role of the observer, the individuality of quantum processes, the relation between decoherence and irreversibility, Bell's quest for `beables', the direction of time, and the concept of experience are revealed, whereby a better understanding is achieved of what the evolutionary picture is all about and what is regarded as missing in already existing realistic pictures.
The ontology of Local Quantum Physics, Rudolf Haag's framework for relativistic quantum theory, is reviewed and discussed. It is one of spatiotemporally localized events and unlocalized causal intermediaries, including the elementary particles, which come progressively into existence in accordance with a fundamental arrow of time. Haag's conception of quantum theory is distinguished from others in which events are also central, especially those of Niels Bohr and John Wheeler, with which it has been compared.
I take a pragmatist perspective on quantum theory. This is not a view of the world described by quantum theory. In this view quantum theory itself does not describe the physical world, nor our observatons, experiences or opinions of it. Instead, the theory offers reliable advice on when to expect an event of one kind or another, and on how strongly to expect each possible outcome of that event. The actual outcome is a perspectival fact: a fact relative to a physical context of assessment. Measurement outcomes and quantum states are both perspectival. By noticing that each must be relativized to an appropriate physical context one can resolve the measurement problem and the problem of nonlocal action. But if the outcome of a quantum measurement is not an absolute fact, then why shoud the statistics of such outcomes give us any objective reason to accept quantum theory? One can describe extensions of the scenario of Wigner's friend in which a statement expressing the outcome of a quantum measurement would be true relative to one such context but not relative to another. However, physical conditions in our world prevent us from realizing such scenarios. Since the outcome of every actual quantum measurement is certified at what is essentially a single context of assessment, the outcome relative to that context is an objective fact in the only sense that matters for science. We should accept quantum theory because the statistics these outcomes display are just those it leads us to expect.
This essay proposes fundamental ontological clarification within contemporary debates on quantum physics: the rigorous distinction between probability as a regime of prediction and the real as material dynamics. Against the widespread view according to which quantum indeterminacy would imply a vague, unstable, or “merely statistical” reality, the text argues that probability belongs to the epistemic plane of knowledge and anticipation, not to the ontological plane of what exists. Quantum physics does not describe an ontologically fluctuating world, but a world whose symbolic access is structurally limited. On this basis, the essay examines the role of Born’s statistical interpretation, decoherence theory, Bell’s theorems, and the Pusey–Barrett–Rudolph result, showing how these impose formal costs on any ontology that conflates formalism and reality. In critical dialogue with QBist, relational, and agential-realist approaches, the text develops a conception of concretion grounded in the notion of mark: the concrete emerges when a material interaction is irreversibly inscribed in a physical support. Stability, far from meaning fixity, is understood as emergent robustness—movement in regime—sufficient to sustain practices, techniques, and historical continuity. The essay concludes by arguing that quantum physics, rather than dissolving the real, demands a more exacting ontology capable of distinguishing precisely between the real, the concrete, and theory.
Abstract Quantum theory has presented scientists and philosophers of science with a series of perplexing questions. It seems to many that any attempt to comprehend a world described by quantum theory will require revision in our understanding of the nature of things far more radical than the revision in our understanding of the nature of space and time demanded by the theories of relativity. It has been claimed that to comprehend quantum theory we must revise our very understanding of such matters as the objective nature of reality and its independence from our perception of it, the nature of a complex system and its relation to its components, and the nature of causal and other kinds of determination in the world.
Some observations are presented starting with the well-known article by Vladimir Fock “Quantum Physics and Philosophical Problems”, published in 1971. In this article, which summarizes for Western readers a long and complicated reflection of the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM), Fock illustrates his “minimal” interpretation of this theory. By minimal, we mean that it only uses concepts related to the operational aspects of the measurement procedures, avoiding any mention of definite quantum ontologies (Bell’s beables). It is argued that, by taking into account the time reversal invariance of the microscopic processes and introducing the notion of irreversibility in an appropriate manner, Fock’s description becomes an anticipation of the “transaction” notion introduced by Cramer a decade later. So, the concept of “collapse” does retain the features of a QM “freak” postulate to become a new way to look at the elementary quantum processes.