Kantian Causality and Quantum Quarks: The Compatibility between Quantum Mechanics and Kant’s Phenomenal World
<p>Quantum indeterminism seems incompatible with Kant’s defense of causality in his Second Analogy. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This first article of a two-part series argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of the Basque Country
2013-05-01
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| Series: | THEORIA : an International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science |
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| Online Access: | http://www.ehu.es/ojs/index.php/THEORIA/article/view/1312 |
| Summary: | <p>Quantum indeterminism seems incompatible with Kant’s defense of causality in his Second Analogy. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This first article of a two-part series argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to the world as observable, not to hypothetical (unobservable) objects such as quarks, detectable only by high energy accelerators. Taking Planck’s constant and the speed of light as the lower and upper bounds of observability provides a way of interpreting the observables of quantum mechanics as empirically real even though they are transcendentally (i.e., pre-observationally) ideal.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 0495-4548 2171-679X |