Schlick/Hong Qian and van Fraassen: Two Different Perspectives on Causality and Quantum Mechanics

Two Different Perspectives on Causality and Quantum Mechanics

Moritz Schlick’s interpretation of the causality principle is based on Schlick’s understanding of quantum mechanics and on his conviction that quantum mechanics strongly supports an empiricist reading of causation in his sense. The present paper compares the empiricist position held by Schlick with Bas van Fraassen’s more recent conception of constructive empiricism. It is pointed out that the ...

Causal Processes and Propensities in Quantum Mechanics

In an influential article published in 1982, Bas Van Fraassen developed an argument against causal realism on the basis of an analysis of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations of quantum mechanics. Several philosophers of science and experts in causal inference – including some causal realists like Wesley Salmon – have accepted Van Fraassen’s argument, interpreting it as a proof that the qua...

Causality: from Hume, via Schlick

Constructive Empiricism, Partial Structures and the Modal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics1

Van Fraassen’s modal interpretation of non-relativist quantum mechanics (QM) is articulated to support an antirealist account of QM. However, given the particular form of van Fraassen’s anti-realism (constructive empiricism), two problems arise when we try to make it compatible with the modal interpretation: one difficulty concerns the tension between the need for modal operators in the modal i...

Causal Inference in Quantum Mechanics: A Reassessment

There has been an intense discussion, albeit largely an implicit one, concerning the inference of causal hypotheses from statistical correlations in quantum mechanics ever since John Bell’s first statement of his notorious theorem in 1966. As is well known, its focus has mainly been the so-called Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (“EPR”) thought experiment, and the ensuing observed correlations in real E...