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The sky is blue, and other reasons quantum mechanics is not underdetermined by evidence

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Abstract

I criticize the widely-defended view that the quantum measurement problem is an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence: more specifically, the view that the unmodified, unitary quantum formalism (interpreted following Everett) is empirically indistinguishable from Bohmian Mechanics and from dynamical-collapse theories like the GRW or CSL theories. I argue that there as yet no empirically successful generalization of either theory to interacting quantum field theory and so the apparent underdetermination is broken by a very large class of quantum experiments that require field theory somewhere in their description. The class of quantum experiments reproducible by either is much smaller than is commonly recognized and excludes many of the most iconic successes of quantum mechanics, including the quantitative account of Rayleigh scattering that explains the color of the sky. I respond to various arguments to the contrary in the recent literature.

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Notes

  1. In lecture 6 of the 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University; see https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/fml.html#6. The quote appears around 8:10.

  2. For reviews in the physics literature, see, e. g. , Zurek (1991), Joos et al. (2003), or Schlosshauer (2007); in the philosophy literature, see Bacciagaluppi (2005) or Wallace (2012, ch.3).

  3. Of course (as an anonymous referee reminds me) the Bohmian had better not obtain precise information about this spatial distribution, on pain of violating the uncertainty principle and conflicting with experiment: their information must be coarse-grained, and the precise level of coarse-graining must depend on the details of the underlying quantum-mechanical process. I actually think there may be a serious issue here for primitive ontologists, but in keeping with the general strategy of this paper, let’s stipulate that they can resolve it.

  4. Or at least, let’s stipulate that it is simply describable. I actually think that the relationship between the world of extended, colored, textured continua that describes our world at human scales is way more complicated than the simple agglomeration account presupposed by (some forms of) Bohmian and dynamical-collapse theories (on this point see also Batterman, 2021) but in accordance with my last disclaimer in section 1, I’ll ignore this concern.

  5. The physics I discuss here is standard and I do not attempt to give original references. See (Wallace, 2021), and references therein, for details.

  6. A lightning-fast and highly incomplete account for those familiar with modern QFT: to get NRQM from QED, start with the path-integral and construct an effective field theory by carrying out the integral over the electromagnetic field explicitly (following, e. g. , Breuer & Petruccione, 2007, ch.12), then take \(c\rightarrow \infty \). To get it from the Standard Model, first obtain QED-plus-nuclei as an effective field theory from the full Standard Model, then repeat the above procedure.

  7. For the record, I don’t concede the claim that Bohmian mechanics improves on the Everett interpretation in terms of explanatory power: depending on their attitude to the quantum state, the Bohmian either borrows the standard explanation of a quantum phenomenon like, e. g. , superconductivity, and ignores the particles until the very end, or else black-boxes the quantum details entirely, since they cannot be spelled out in terms of primitive ontology. But I do not need this for my argument and so will not defend it in any detail.

  8. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify this point.

  9. Again, I do not attempt to give original citations for well-established physics in this section.

  10. Thanks to John Norton for this observation.

  11. Mostly. Some heavy atoms or for precision measurements require a relativistic treatment of the electrons, and the Lamb shift is a quantum-field-theoretic phenomenon.

  12. See, e. g. , Faruqi and Henderson (2007).

  13. See, e. g. , Schmidt-Böcking et al. (2016).

  14. See, e. g. , Peurrung (2000).

  15. See, e. g. , von Klitzing (2005), and references therein.

  16. See, e. g. , Gehrenbeck (1978).

  17. Callender (p.73) suggests certain applications of Bohmian and collapse theories to quantum gravity, and notes that ‘[i]f Bohmian or Collapse answers to problems in new realms can’t be reproduced by Everett then it’s not clear who is more progressive’. He freely concedes that QFT ‘dwarfs these examples in importance’ but I think the more important point is that these examples, unlike the predictions of QFT, are not empirical — so far they have not led to novel confirmed predictions.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for feedback on earlier versions of this work from audiences in Oxford, Pittsburgh, and at two virtual conferences (‘The Quantum Limits of Knowledge’ and ‘On the Shoulders of Everett’), and for careful and helpful comments by two anonymous referees.

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Wallace, D. The sky is blue, and other reasons quantum mechanics is not underdetermined by evidence. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 13, 54 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-023-00557-2

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