Michael Epperson

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.

Spośród wielu prac traktujących o filozoficznych konsekwencjach

mechaniki kwantowej, znaczna część starała się wyjaśnić paradoksalne

efekty pojawiające się, gdy próbuje się połączyć teorię

kwantową z klasycznym, mechanistyczno-materialistycznym światopoglądem.

Ostatnie wyniki z zakresu fizyki teoretycznej, pochodzące

m.in. od Roberta Griffithsa, Rolanda Omnesa, Wojciecha Zurka

i Murraya Gell-Manna, sprowokowały powstanie nowej rodziny

interpretacji mechaniki kwantowej, które skutecznie łagodzą te

paradoksalne niezgodności - jednak nie poprzez ingerencję w formalizm

kopenhaski, lecz poprzez rozwój nowego schematu ontologicznego,

w którym opis klasyczny wyprowadzany jest z bardziej

fundamentalnego opisu kwantowo-mechanicznego na drodze pojęciowego

abstrahowania przy użyciu pojęcia „dekoherencji kwantowej".

By the relational realist interpretation of wave function collapse, the quantum mechanical actualization of potentia is defined as a decoherence-driven process by which each actualization (in “orthodox” terms, each measurement outcome) is conditioned both by physical and logical relations with the actualities conventionally demarked as “environmental” or external to that particular outcome. But by the relational realist interpretation, the actualization-in-process is understood as internally related to these “enironmental” data per the formalism of quantum decoherence. The concept of “actualization via wave function collapse” is accounted for solely by virtue of these presupposed logical relations—the same logical relations otherwise presupposed by the scientific method itself—and thus requires no “external” physical-dynamical trigger: e.g., the Gaussian hits of GRW, acts of conscious observation, etc. By the relational realist interpretation, it is the physical and logical relations among quantum actualities (quantum “final real things”) that drives the process of decoherence and, via the latter, the logically conditioned actualization of potentia. In this regard, the relational realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is a praxiological interpretation; that is, these physical and logical relations are ontologically active relations, contributing not just to the epistemic coordination of quantum actualizations, but to the process of actualization itself.

With the advent of quantum theory, the philosophical distinction between "what appears to be" and "what is reasoned to be" has once again, after several centuries of easy dismissal by classical mechanistic materialism, become an important feature of physics. In recent well-regarded interpretations of quantum physics, including those proposed by Robert Griffiths, Roland Omnès, and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, we have seen careful investigations into the physical (i.e., not "merely philosophical") distinction between the order of contingent causal relation and the order of necessary logical implication. I argue that a careful philosophical exploration of the function of the logical order in modern interpretations of quantum physics compels the abandonment of derivative classical, dualistic understandings of "determinism versus indeterminism," "logical necessity versus causal contingency," "subject versus object," "epistemic versus ontological," among other fundamental dualisms. The incoherence underlying this classical understanding of these principle-pairs as mutually exclusive features of reality can be relieved if they are instead understood as mutually implicative features of fundamental units of relation or "quantum praxes."