Abstract
One of the putative lessons from quantum mechanics is that the mathematical structure of that theory and empirical evidence demand that we accept a view of our physical world in which fundamental physical processes at the microlevel are irreducibly and ineliminably indeterministic and even that there cannot exist an objective, observer-independent reality (or “truth of the matter”). This is certainly a world view that is consonant with the standard, or “Copenhagen”, interpretation of quantum mechanics, often associated with some of the founding fathers of quantum theory, such as Niels Bohr, Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. I first substantiate this representation of the Copenhagen interpretation by examining typical claims made by these founders and succinctly summarize those positions. I then argue that this common acceptance of the necessity of indeterminism is unfounded, since there exists an alternative version of quantum mechanics, one due to David Bohm, that can be in principle empirically indistinguishable from standard quantum mechanics. Moreover, in Bohmian mechanics (BM), fundamental physical processes at the microlevel are irreducibly and ineliminably deterministic and there exists an objective, observer-independent reality. While this alternative formulation of quantum mechanics does allow one to have an ontology that is much closer to that of classical physics than is usually associated with quantum phenomena, it does at the same time raise foundational questions about the status of the special theory of relativity and about the ontology of spacetime.
James T. Cushing was deceased on 2002.
Some of the mathematical and historical illustrations used in this paper were also used in my presentation “The Quantum-Mechanical World View: Deterministic or Indeterministic?” at the David Bohm Symposium held in São Paulo, Brazil, September 21–25, 1998.
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Notes
- 1.
The sense of this “dictum” is, it seems to me, a central claim of Quine’s Word and Object (1960). This particular sentence is my own recollection of a statement made by Quine during a public lecture at Wittenberg University in late April, 1992.
- 2.
Bohr 1934, 48–51.
- 3.
Ibid., 53
- 4.
Ibid., 108.
- 5.
Heisenberg 1958, 46.
- 6.
Ibid., 48.
- 7.
Ibid., 129.
- 8.
Born 1951, 155, 163–164. (Emphases in original).
- 9.
Born 1949, 109.
- 10.
Von Neumann 1955, 325.
- 11.
- 12.
Heilbron 1988, 219.
- 13.
Einstein 1949, 666.
- 14.
Quoted in Moore (1989, 228).
- 15.
Landau and Lifshitz 1977, 2.
- 16.
Of course, the correspondence rules between the mathematical symbols that appear in a theory (e.g., the momentum operator −iℏ∇ in quantum mechanics) and the physical observables in the world (the momentum p in my example) constitute an interpretation in a sense. However, it is not these correspondences (which I bracket with the formalism) that I am concerned with in discussing various interpretations of the formalism of quantum mechanics.
- 17.
Bohm 1952.
- 18.
- 19.
Bohm 1952.
- 20.
Bohm 1980.
- 21.
There is a good deal more that remains to be said about this, in addition to the mere statement that U = 0. On this, see Cushing and Bowman (1999).
- 22.
See Valentini (1996) on the contingent nature of such quantum equilibrium and on the possibility of observing empirical differences from standard quantum mechanics.
- 23.
See Cushing (1994, especially Chapter 11) on this.
- 24.
See Cushing 1994.
- 25.
Bell 1987, 160.
- 26.
Cushing 1994, 193–195.
- 27.
I am not claiming that all noncovariant equations make covariant predictions. That would clearly be false.
- 28.
See, for example, Cushing (1981).
- 29.
See, for example, Cushing (1994, especially Section 10 4.2).
- 30.
- 31.
Mermin 1998.
- 32.
Mermin 1998, 753.
- 33.
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Cushing, J.T. (2019). Bohmian Mechanics and Its Ontological Commitments. In: Cordero, A. (eds) Philosophers Look at Quantum Mechanics. Synthese Library, vol 406. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15659-6_8
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