London and Bauer Revisited

Abstract

AbstractHere a ‘blow-by-blow’ account of London and Bauer’s ‘little book’ is presented, beginning with their central claim that quantum mechanics should itself be understood as a theory of knowledge. It counts as such precisely because it sets at its very core the aforementioned relationship between mind and the world. This is revealed through a careful analysis of the measurement situation, presented in detail by London and Bauer. In particular, they insist that the observer is able to know her own state because she has with herself a relationship of a special character, as manifested through the faculty of introspection. By virtue of this immanent knowledge she is then able to separate herself from the quantum superposition and establish her own objectivity. However, this is not to be equated with her consciousness mysteriously ‘causing’ the wave-function to collapse; rather, her ego thereby emerges as one pole of the relationship, with the system, now also in a definite state, as the ‘object-pole’. The terms used in the text are redolent of phenomenological language and with that understanding we can see just how wide of the mark Putnam and Shimony’s criticisms are (and also Margenau and Wigner’s interpretation, to be fair!). It is then suggested that this ‘little book’ may serve as the basis for a novel phenomenological understanding of quantum physics.