Healey, Richard (2025) A Pragmatist Understanding of Quantum Mechanics. [Preprint]
![[img]](https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text
A Pragmatist Understanding of Quantum Mechanics with Abstract Richard Healey.pdf Download (491kB) |
Abstract
Applications of quantum mechanics have led to many successful predictions and explanations of puzzling phenomena, and we now apply quantum mechanics to gain, process, and communicate information in novel ways. We can understand quantum mechanics by understanding how we have applied it. We should not seek agreement on the nature of the world it represents, because this theory does not itself represent the physical world (though its applications do help us to represent it better).
When applied to a quantum state, quantum mechanics yields probabilities for physical events: both state and probability are objective—not because they represent elements of physical reality, but because each exerts normative authority over the beliefs of anyone who accepts quantum mechanics and applies it relative to a physical situation they may (but need not) occupy. These events may be described by statements (about values of magnitudes) that are meaningful in an appropriate environmental context, and quantum mechanics can help one to say when that is. Measurement creates an appropriate context, so here the Born rule indirectly yields probabilities of measurement outcomes. The quantum state of a system does not “collapse” on measurement: a new state must be assigned relative to a physical situation in which information about the outcome is accessible.
Understood this way, there is no measurement problem, and violation of Bell inequalities does not demonstrate “spooky” non-local action. Quantum field theories have no physical ontology of their own: a quantum field is a mathematical object in a model whose application helps to improve and extend our descriptions of the world in other terms. We cannot realise the scenario of Wigner’s friend and its recent extensions: but the data that provide overwhelming evidence for quantum mechanics are objective in the same sense as the relative measurement outcomes described in those scenarios.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
||||||
| Additional Information: | To appear in Faye, J. and Johansson, L-G (editors) How to Understand Quantum Mechanics: 100 Years of Ongoing Interpretation. Springer. | ||||||
| Keywords: | Pragmatist, interpretation, probability, objectivity, measurement problem, non-local, quantum field ontology, Wigner’s friend, quantum state, measurement outcome | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
||||||
| Depositing User: | Richard Andrew Healey | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 17 Jan 2026 12:20 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 17 Jan 2026 12:20 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 27936 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
||||||
| Date: | December 2025 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/27936 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}