Abstract
Existing proposals concerning the ontology of quantum mechanics (QM) either involve speculation that goes beyond the scientific evidence or abandon realism about large parts of QM. This paper proposes a way out of this dilemma, by showing that QM as it is formulated in standard textbooks allows for a much more substantive ontological commitment than is usually acknowledged. For this purpose, I defend a non-fundamentalist approach to ontology, which is then applied to various aspects of QM. In particular, I will defend realism about spin, which has been viewed as a particularly hard case for the ontology of QM.
Highlights
The relationship between quantum mechanics (QM) and ontology has always been a difficult one, and arguably, many of the difficulties stem from the so-called measurement problem
Existing proposals concerning the ontology of quantum mechanics (QM) either involve speculation that goes beyond the scientific evidence or abandon realism about large parts of QM
It is customary to distinguish three classes of such proposals: First, theories supplementing the quantum formalism with additional variables, second, theories modifying the dynamics of QM so as to account for the disappearance of superpositions, and third, approaches modifying our understanding of the macroscopic world in such a way that it conforms to the unaltered formalism of QM (e.g., Everettian many-worlds theories)
Summary
The relationship between quantum mechanics (QM) and ontology has always been a difficult one, and arguably, many of the difficulties stem from the so-called measurement problem (see Myrvold 2017 for a brief introduction and further references). The way in which the measurement problem has made quantum ontology difficult has, undergone a rather profound transformation during the history of QM. The part of the theory that was not concerned with the outcomes of measurements was generally viewed in a non-realistic way, such that questions about the ontology of QM, in the sense of asking what the quantum formalism tells us about reality beyond measurements, were not given much consideration
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