Abstract
This introductory chapter will deal with what the main interpretational problems of canonical quantum theory are.
In particular, we will analyse how the mathematical formalism of quantum theory leads to a non-realist interpretation of the theory. The focus will lie on understanding and analysing the Kochen-Specker theorem (K-S theorem), which can be thought of as the main mathematical underlying reason why quantum theory is non realist. The interpretation which comes out is the well-known Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which is an instrumentalist interpretation. However, such an interpretation leads to many conceptual problems.
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- 1.
Ontology comes from the Greek word meaning “being, that which is” and indicates the study of what things are in themselves and what can be said to exist.
- 2.
Epistemology comes from the Greek word meaning “knowledge” and it is the study concerning what is knowledge and how do we gain knowledge.
- 3.
Boolean logic will be described later on in the book. For now we will simply say that a Boolean logic is the logic we use in our every-day thinking and in our language. Such a logic is characterised by the fact that (i) it is distributive, (ii) it only has two truth values {true,false} and (iii) the logical connectives are our linguistic logical connectives: “and”, “exclusive or”, “not”, “if then”.
- 4.
It is worth noting that our own language reflects a realist view of the world: “The tree is three meters tall”.
- 5.
Care should be taken at this point since, quite often, physical terms only represent idealisations of real physical systems.
- 6.
In a stochastic approach the realist conditions (i) and (ii) at the beginning of the section still hold.
- 7.
We will clarify this later on in the book.
References
C.J. Isham, Lectures on Quantum Theory, Mathematical and Structural Foundations (Imperial College Press, London, 1995)
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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Flori, C. (2013). Philosophical Motivations. In: A First Course in Topos Quantum Theory. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 868. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35713-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35713-8_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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