Quantum Ontology: an Empirical Fundamentalist Approach

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a general metaphysical framework can be fruitfully integrated with contemporary fundamental physics to help advance our understanding of quantum ontology. The basic idea is that metaphysics concerns fundamental reality and how fundamental reality is related to reality. If we accept that fundamental reality includes fundamental physics, then the investigation of fundamental reality by physicists is one component of the overall undertaking of metaphysics. The distinctively philosophical components include (1) identifying how fundamental reality relates to reality, (2) clarifying our epistemic grasp of fundamental reality, and (3) comparing our answers to existing alternatives. It would take considerable effort to accomplish each of these tasks fully, but in the following discussion, I hope to sketch one particular philosophical program and how it can address them. My goal is to provide a proof of concept for a scientific metaphysics that is broader and more conceptually oriented than science itself yet is capable of supporting the conclusion that the actual world is ultimately just fundamental physics. I will first sketch my proposed philosophical program and its central distinction between fundamental and derivative reality. In order to support adoption of the program, I will then address tasks (1) and (2) by introducing a formal device called an ‘empirical surrogate’. Its purpose is to idealize the empirical phenomena that scientific theories attempt to predict and explain so that the fundamental theory can explain the empirical phenomena by explaining the empirical surrogate. One can think of the concept ‘empirical surrogate’ as an alternative to Wilfrid Sellars’ (1962) “manifest image” and to the more recently proposed idea of a “primitive ontology.” In sections 4 and 5, I then illustrate the fundamental/derivative distinction and ‘empirical surrogate’ by applying them to the classic debate over the ontological status of space in classical mechanics and to contemporary debate over quantum ontology. Finally, I address task (3) by contrasting my approach to some recent advocacy for primitive ontology and to Bell’s appeal to “beables” and “local beables.”