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Laws of nature and the reality of the wave function

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Abstract

In this paper I review three different positions on the wave function, namely: nomological realism, dispositionalism, and configuration space realism by regarding as essential their capacity to account for the world of our experience. I conclude that the first two positions are committed to regard the wave function as an abstract entity. The third position will be shown to be a merely speculative attempt to derive a primitive ontology from a reified mathematical space. Without entering any discussion about nominalism, I conclude that the elimination of abstract entities from one’s ontology commits one to instrumentalism about the wave function, a position that therefore is not as unmotivated as it has seemed to be to many philosophers.

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Notes

  1. Of course, this neglect is compatible with a natural ontological attitude towards endorsing the existence of elementary particles (Fine 1984).

  2. Born’s original attitude towards his own rule explicitly mentioned probability of measurement outcomes, a claim that in turn depended on Bohr’s view that in quantum physics measurement is a primitive and fundamental notion. See Cushing (1994).

  3. For an assessment of these latter elements, see Dorato (2013). For a general exposition of Rovelli’s philosophy of quantum theory, see Laudisa and Rovelli (2013).

  4. While these authors may be interpreted as being neutral with respect to the question whether laws are its or bits (to use Callender’s (2014) felicitous expression), I will argue that in their texts they seem to defend the former option.

  5. An informative case-study vis à vis these options is in Belot (2012). Many-worlds realism about \(\varPsi \) will be discussed within the view of configuration space realism (Vaidman 2012).

  6. For an account of “abstract”, see next page.

  7. This dilemma was presented already in Dorato and Laudisa (2014).

  8. This aim involves the commitment both to the claim that well-confirmed physical theories are at least approximately true given the evidence (the epistemological claim) and to the claim that they purport to describe a mind-independent, non-directly observable world (the metaphysical claim). These claims are obviously related.

  9. For an early defense of piecemeal realism, see Miller (1987).

  10. It could be objected that in the absence of a Bohmian theory of quantum gravity, it is meaningless to attribute a wave function to the universe. This objection however, would be unfair, since here we are trying to fathom the metaphysical consequences of non-relativistic Bohmian mechanics, so that the arena that we need to presuppose to formulate the theory is Newtonian spacetime (or for relativistic extensions, Minkowski spacetime with the addition of a privileged foliation).

  11. The word in square parentheses is my addition.

  12. Note once again that the disjunctive definition of abstract given in the previous section allows for such a possibility.

  13. Also Callender (2014) raises this question for the relation between Bohmian particles and the guiding-law, when the latter is regarded as an “it” rather than a “bit”.

  14. This reading was applied by Dorato and Esfeld (2010) to GRW-type theories.

  15. See Dorato (2005).

  16. How this reference should be understood will be discussed below.

  17. As is well known, in Bohmian mechanics the particles cannot back-react on the field.

  18. Recall that the hypothesis that \(\varPsi \) is causally active has been rejected before.

  19. Recall that the view that the universal wave function lives in a 3\(N\) dimensional, physical configuration space (Albert 1996) will be discussed in a later section.

  20. This view is explored but not fully endorsed by Norsen (2010).

  21. For the following objections, see Dorato and Esfeld (2015) and Dorato and Laudisa (2014).

  22. I owe this objection to Albert Solé.

  23. For a sketch of argument against an identification of the two modal views of laws, which pertains to the explanatory power of dispositionalism, see Dorato and Esfeld (2015).

  24. Darby (2012) also defends a global approach to supervenience, which turns the Humean mosaic into a lawlike feature of the universe, that is, a property of the universe as such.

  25. See also Wallace (2013b, pp. 48–52).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Albert Solé and to two other anonymous referee for their comments and criticism.

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  1. Section of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, University of Rome Three, Via Ostiense 234, 00146, Rome, Italy

    Mauro Dorato

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Dorato, M. Laws of nature and the reality of the wave function. Synthese 192, 3179–3201 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0696-2

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