Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T17:08:08.458Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The Tale of Quantum Logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

By
Tim Maudlin
Edited by
Yemima Ben-Menahem
Tim Maudlin
Affiliation:
Professor of philosophy, Rutgers University
Yemima Ben-Menahem
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Get access

Summary

Like all good tales, this is a story about temptation. It all begins with Kant.

In the first Critique, Kant posed the fateful question: how is a priori synthetic knowledge possible? Among the items of undoubted knowledge to be accounted for: that the world as revealed by experience shall be in a Euclidean space; that it shall be governed by deterministic laws; that all substance is permanent, being neither created nor destroyed.

The detailed argumentation brought forward in support of these claims is famously obscure, but the general outlines of the position are easy to sketch. We can know a priori that the world of experience will conform to these principles, not because they are conditions on things as they are in themselves, but rather because they are conditions on how things must be presented to us and conceived by us and judged by us in order to constitute experience. Items of experience must be given to us in perception, and so are subject to the forms of perceptive intuition (space and time). Further, in order to judge that our perceptions are of objective things, the appearances of things must conform to certain rules. In short, a priori synthetic knowledge is possible because it is not knowledge of how things are, but knowledge of how the world as revealed by experience must be, in order to be a world revealed by experience.

The progress of science was not kind to Kant.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hilary Putnam , pp. 156 - 187
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albert, D. Z. (1992). Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Bell, J. S. (1990). “Against ‘Measurement’”. In A. I. Miller (ed.), Sixty-Two Years of Uncertainty. New York: Plenum, pp. 17–31CrossRef
Clark, P., and Hale, B. (eds.) (1994). Reading Putnam. Oxford: Blackwell
Dürr, D.; Goldstein, S.; and Zanghì, N. (1996). “Bohmian Mechanics as the Foundation of Quantum Mechanics”. In Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, ed. J. T. Cushing, A. Fine, and S. Goldstein. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic PublishersCrossRef
Ghirardi, G. C.; Rimini, A.; and Weber, T. (1986). “Unified Dynamics for Microscopic and Macroscopic Physics”. Physical Review D 34:470–491Google Scholar
Maudlin, T. (1995). “Three Measurement Problems”. Topoi 14:7–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perle, P. (1990). “Toward a Relativistic Theory of Statevector Reduction”. In Sixty-Two Years of Uncertainty, ed. A. I. Miller. New York: Plenum, pp. 193–214CrossRef
Putnam, H. (1965). “A Philosopher Looks at Quantum Mechanics”. In Beyond the Edge of Certainty, ed. R. Colodny. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 75–101. Reprinted in Putnam 1975, pp. 130–158
Putnam, H. (1968). “Is Logic Empirical?”. In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 5, ed. R. Cohen and M. Wartofsky, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Reprinted as “The Logic of Quantum Mechanics”. In Putnam 1975, pp. 174–187
Putnam, H. (1975). Mathematics Matter and Method: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Putnam, H. (1981). “Quantum Mechanics and the Observer”. Erkenntniss 16: 193–219. Reprinted in Putnam 1983, pp. 248–270CrossRef
Putnam, H. (1983). Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Putnam, H. (1994a). Words and Life. Ed. J. Connant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Putnam, H. (1994b). “Comments and Replies”. In Clark and Hale 1994, pp. 242–295
Quine, W. (1951). “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Philosophical Review 60:20–43. Reprinted in Quine [1953], pp. 20–46CrossRef
Quine, W. (1953). From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper Torchbooks
Reichenbach, H. (1958). The Philosophy of Space and Time. New York: Dover

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×