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Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously

Kastner, Ruth and Kauffman, Stuart and Epperson, Michael (2017) Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously. [Preprint]

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Abstract

It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an ontological duality of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is understood per Heisenberg’s original proposal, and the former is roughly equivalent to Descartes’ ‘extended substance.’ However, this is not a dualism of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and therefore does not inherit the infamous ‘mind-body’ problem. Rather, res potentia and res extensa are proposed as mutually implicative ontological extants that serve to explain the key conceptual challenges of quantum theory; in particular, nonlocality, entanglement, null measurements, and wave function collapse. It is shown that a natural account of these quantum perplexities emerges, along with a need to reassess our usual ontological commitments involving the nature of space and time.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Kastner, Ruth
Kauffman, Stuart
Epperson, Michael
Keywords: Quantum theory, measurement, quantum ontology, Heisenberg Potentia, nonlocality, null measurement
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics
Depositing User: Ruth E. Kastner
Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2017 05:08
Last Modified: 06 Oct 2017 05:08
Item ID: 13518
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics
Date: 5 October 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13518

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