LARUELLE'S QUANTUM HERMENEUTICS

Thought does not only make use of images to give it concrete illustrations or applications, but is also organised in terms of certain overarching images that give form and plausibility to its exercise in a particular epoch. There are two influential images of thought that have given rise to diverse contemporary metaphysical research programmes in Continental Philosophy: the quantum image and the performance image. These are articulated in opposition to the dominance of the structuralist image. The most radical version of a philosophical project that elaborates a quantum image of thought is to be found in Slavoj Zizek’s recent work, while the most radical version of the performance image is given by Bruno Latour’s AIME project. François Laruelle attempts to give a version of the quantum image, and some of his followers have tried to develop a performance image in his name. In both cases their thought is not radical enough, because they are caught in un-criticized structuralist presuppositions.

The Philosophical Review, 2020

In this thought-provoking book, Richard Healey proposes a new interpretation of quantum theory inspired by pragmatist philosophy. Healey puts forward the interpretation as an alternative to realist quantum theories on the one hand such as Bohmian mechanics, spontaneous collapse theories, and many-worlds interpretations, which are different proposals for describing what the quantum world is like and what the basic laws of physics are, and non-realist interpretations on the other hand such as quantum Bayesianism, which proposes to understand quantum theory as describing agents' subjective epistemic states. The central idea of Healey's proposal is to understand quantum theory as providing not a description of the physical world but a set of authoritative and objectively correct prescriptions about how agents should act. The book provides a detailed development and defense of that idea, and it contains interesting discussions about a wide range of philosophical issues such as representation, probability, explanation, causation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality. Healey's project is at the intersection of physics and philosophy. The book is divided into two parts. Part I of the book discusses the foundational questions in quantum theory from the perspective of the prescriptive interpretation. In Part II, Healey discusses the philosophical implications of the view. Both parts are written in a way that is largely accessible to non-specialists. In this brief book review, I will focus on two questions: (1) How does Healey's idea work? (2) What reasons are there to believe in it?

2017

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1995

Історія науки і техніки, 2023

The term Quale Mechanics is proposed here as describing the qualitative aspects of Quantum Mechanics that are susceptible of metaphysical considerations. The aim of Quale Mechanics is to distill the quantum discourse to its pillars in order to construct its properphilosophical in naturequale discourse. The framework of the discussion is initiated by revisiting the platonic approach of the manner in which knowledge is perceived/processed, and then by discussing the four sapiential stages before arriving at concept of the eide. The sensible-suprasensible dichotomy is exposed by contrasting aistheta to the eide. A discussion on the historical development and the foundation of the pillars of Quantum Mechanics is followed. This includes Planck's solution for the black-body radiation problem with the introduction of quantain conflict with Newtonian physics-followed by Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect and the implications involving the dual nature of light (particle vs. wave) and two generalizations of the quantum character of matter: the planetary model of the atom by Bohr, and the dual particle-wave character of electron demonstrated by de Broglie. The subsequent distillation of these semi-classical concepts into more abstract mathematical concepts by Heisenberg, Born, Dirac and Pauli are then reviewed-with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and with the concept of wavefunction as landmarks that unmistakably departs from the classical deterministic view of matter. A representative illustration of these achievements is given by the Casimir effectwith implications for gravity and an illustration of how vacuum can in fact not be considered to be truly void.

This paper argues that a European controversy over a 'mystical' hypothesis, one assigning the mind a role to play at the material level of reality, shaped much of the debate over the interpretation of the quantum equations. It traces back the controversy to the past two decades, beginning in the late 1920s—birth of quantum theory—and concluding with Erwin Schrödinger's lectures published as 'Mind and Matter'. Becoming aware of the issues at stake can help us understand the historical, philosophical and cultural background from which today's physics emerged.

1996

Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (Quantum Possibilities: The Work of Karen Barad), 2016

Karen Barad's work distinguishes itself as a diffraction pattern of quantum physics, feminist/queer thought and/as philosophy. In order to gauge the ethico-onto-epistemological impact that the shift toward 'quantum' has on theorizations of what we call 'world' and 'Being'—those 'big' philosophical questions—it helps to relate her thought to other philosophical endeavors that also work on this foundational level. In this contribution I propose to read Barad's quantum ontology alongside Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's urgent quest of immanence. It is this concern for immanence, according to their final collaboration What is Philosophy?, which still has to be seen as "the burning issue of all philosophy".

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12992, 2023

According to one possible diagnosis of the quantum measurement problem, it is a consequence of quantum fundamentalism claiming that ontology and epistemology of the world are exclusively quantum, and classical physics is only an approximation. For N. Bohr, the measurement problem is a pseudo-problem because any quantum phenomenon presupposes the classical context of an experimental setup and the use of classical concepts to describe it. We consider Bohr's position from the point of view of our contextual quantum realism (CQR), inspired by the later Wittgenstein philosophy. Our approach is consistent with H. Zinkernagel's interpretation, according to which Bohr's position is not only epistemological antifundamentalism, but also ontological anti-fundamentalism.