Reification of Concepts in Quantum Physics:
The best of physicists and philosophers of physics even today do not seem to be decided on any concrete but all-encompassing solution by reason of the rational strength of arguments given in favour of the one or another solution. The questions not answered here are these:
(1) Why do physicists not think of the epistemic processes of identification of energy propagations as a geometrical wave, a geometrical particle, or as their alternation, or even as their superposition, and what are the reasons for such misplaced identification of concreteness of the mathematical entities as if they both existed physically out there?
(2) And then, when they feel confronted in themselves as to the paradoxes involved in their own creation, why do they tend to declare that all these (a) are just virtual, or (b) need to be causal in the world merely by reason of a statistical causality (and not by reason of the statistics upon the experimental history of measurements and of identification of causes), or (c) should be paradoxically the external reality because the mathematics says so?
(3) Are these not also modes of reification of what is made out in concepts, of which the basis is the continued tendency to hold the substance metaphysics and/or to oppose such a metaphysics absolutely, as if in the cosmos there were no existents at all behind the phenomena and the data that are being spoken of in physics?
(4) When we, for example, say that the wave function collapses in the physical calculations, do we not, in physics, tend to insist that the existent carrier of energy propagation outside is just collapsing into nothing or into something else that is either existent or mysteriously absolutely virtual? Does this sort of answers solve anything explanatorily?
(5) Are these not the results of the reification of our concept of collapse so as to naming it as an external physical process in exact existential correspondence with our imaginative and mathematically driven conceptualization?
(6) Why do some physicists not have enough ability (a) to recognize the need to establish that the physical calculations must be proved to have an existent process out there, and (b) not to identify the collapse in the equations with its supposed correspondent in the external world (as we do when we say that the pen exists)?
(7) Can they not at least imagine that the epistemic identification via logic and mathematics does not ipso facto produce a correspondence? In the absence of this ability in many physicists, is not fundamental quantum physics again becoming prey to the same age-old correspondence theory of truth that they denounce and accuse many philosophers of the past as having already been prey to?
(8) A typical manner of countering these arguments is to accuse these same arguments as originating from classical physics and notions. But such classical origin of reification of notions is exactly what I attempt to demonstrate in quantum physics and other related sciences – using notions of concept formation, of their foundation in existent physical processes, and of the ultimate and undeniable Categories of all existence.
Arguments Supported by Evident Examples: I add here a few clarifications to what I said above, based on examples from physics.
(1) Take the case of potential energy. It is an energy termed after a certain difference of states. We do discover it quantitatively everywhere. But the discovery is as that of a difference of calculated or calculable energy values, not directly as of an energy carrier so identified.
The same is not the case with photons, neutrinos, etc. These wavicles are identifiable as the very carriers of whatever quantitative energy they carry. What I mean is that whatever energy they contain, and not merely and exactly what we tend to calculate them to contain. As an absolute truth about these quantities, we can only determine whether they are zero, finite, or infinite.
Any measurement beyond these is an ontological commitment to be borne out via experimental verification and augmentation of theoretical and experimental results by use of future theories and experimental advances. The present work shall show that Extension and Change are the foundational criteria upon which such measurements and the proofs of existence of both observable and unobservable energies and matter should be based.
In the case of potential energy, the verification is of the difference, and not of the necessary correspondence with a wavicle as the carrier of potential energy. The latter should have been seen as a must for us to suppose that potential energy does not exist as an energy carrier propagation.
One thing becomes clear here: Energy propagations are theoretically to be posited as energy carriers. Of course, the energy as such is not a thing, but is the quantity of some finite capacity of any so-identifiable “energy carrier” to cause an amount of work, of movement. The quantity of some work / action is not the same as the difference between two states of quantity of work / action, which we call potential energy. The energy carrier has the Category of Change as its internal quality. That is, movement is within it not merely as an additional capacity but as the very quality. Every part of an energy-carrier is in Change.
(2) If we speak of electron as the same sort of energy carrier, there is a conceptual difficulty. An electron is at the most a carrier of carriers of energy, but it is not a relatively well finalizable carrier wavicle of energy of the type that photons are, with respect to the phase of the universe or parts of it or groups of universes wherein photons are relatively more unified as energy carriers than perhaps in other phases or other worlds. Electrons are matter-wavicles containing many smaller quanta of photon energy.
There is nothing wrong in saying this, even if these energy-carrying quanta are resident in electrons not in the very form in which they produce the sort of work or as when free of the higher condensation in electrons in the electromagnetic phenomenon. Hence, essentially, electrons are matter particles moving generally in wave form. If we tend to term an electron as energy carrier conceptually on par with photons, we may have to term also a stone as a set of energy wavicles. That would miss the mark set as the purpose of scientific activity and thought in general, but this is a fact.
The wave function collapse cannot be identified as an existent process out there in a manner similar to that in which we can adduce quanta of energy to any existent energy-carrier wavicle in propagation. This is because the wave function collapse is most probably not a collapse of some waves and/or particles (i.e., wavicles) out there, but the collapse of a certain quantitative symmetry, a certain expected behaviour of the quantities yielded by theory, etc.
But this is not the same as what happens when we create a notion to correspond to a process and we identify the latter with a supposed external correspondent of the notion. Hence, I hold that a wave function collapse is not to have an exactly corresponding change definable as what the word ‘collapse’ can mean, in any existent energy-quanta carrier wavicle. We witness many physicists taking for granted, or omitting to differentiate between, the technical and the ordinary meaning of ‘collapse’; and thus, their audience gets convinced into believing in their new physics under the same mistake.
Is it not necessary to condone such matters in the sciences on the count that human cognition has limits? True. But if this is admitted to be the case, it must also be admitted at the theoretically notional sources of any system of thought, science, and must especially so be infused at the experimental methods and interpretation of experimental and theoretical results of the system of thought and science at question. This is not being done enough in any one of these cases.
(3) This is exactly like special relativity tacitly defining in the Lorentz factor that, since all our physical observations come to be based upon the speed of electromagnetic propagations, the said system of theory “proves” the velocity of light as ultimate and that this does not permit superluminal velocities. This is nothing but begging the question. For more than a century, practically none questioned this self-defeating assumption. Almost everyone is blissful about the technical tool this stipulation offers for science and technology. Under a similar attitude are also the AI specialists who do not inquire what the stuff of information is, but can manipulate it for much technological success!
Conclusions about the Successes of Quantum Physics: To conclude, the successes of quantum physics consist in that at least many of the measurementally determined mathematical explanations of phenomena (phenomenon: the showing-themselves of existent processes from some layers of the processes within) are such that, within the system of mathematically discussing these explanations, (1) further calculations and approximations fall in place, and (2) further theoretical constructions are made possible.
This demonstrates a certain extent of consistency in the theoretical apparatus wherein the initial mathematical definitions and experimentally approximate quantifications permit the acceptance of many further results as true to the foundations of the theoretical apparatuses. But if evident paradoxes arise, then evidently its source lies most probably in the foundational notions of the system, their definitional specificities, etc.
As a conclusion, I suggest that fundamental quantum physics has many unclarified notions that play into its interpretations as miraculous mystifications of physical events, which may directly be attributed to the custom of misplaced identification of concreteness in quantum physics. Hence, the successes do not justify accepting in a literal manner all that is intended by the “even-now substance-philosophically” dominated or “radically virtual-philosophically” dominated minds of many physicists. Cosmology is no exception to what is said above.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.