I am very interested to learn more about any physicist who is willing to make ontological commitments. Ultimately, such a commitment is to realism - what is the epistemological support?
I strongly doubt the myriad complexities here have been resolved. Or are you proposing a kind of 'natural ontological attitude'?
If you think that physicists in general aren't working on these things you are probably confined within one subfield of physics. There are definitely thousands of physicists who spend a lot of time reading and writing papers on these kind of ontological topics
It's one thing to say, we're pretty sure A = B. It is another thing to say, we have definite knowledge that A = B. The epistemologers can be vicious gatekeepers!
To be clear, I want nothing more than to see a break in the log-jam of 20th-21st century epistemology. In fact, I am fighting for it. But I'm extremely skeptical that there is (or can be) any progress here, without a drastic and new approach. I am delighted to see brave physicists making ontological commitments - perhaps they are not aware of the tangled web that awaits them.
This is why Fine's book is called "The Shaky Game". Epistemological grounding for claims in physics is... shaky at best. I am not satisfied with Fine's concession - the NOA (natural ontological attitude). I believe that only a drastic solution will resolve it.
Please, please, please read Fine's book. It lays out the central problems here much better than I can hope to do, and is an pleasant and engaging read. And please stay in touch here and tell me what you think! I am practically obsessed with this topic, but I am not an academic, and have little time to research it.
The central binary here is 'realism' and 'irrealism'. In the simplest reduction, on one side, people say, 'this is what is REAL'; on the other, people say, 'prove it... psst, you can't'. Einstein was a realist, and was extensively ridiculed for it. I wouldn't be surprised if there are no actual ontological realists in physics today, though it is my sincere hope that there may be a few brave souls out there. I suspect that if you engage Tong (e.g.) in the deeper parts of this topic, he would eventually concede to a natural ontological attitude, and back off of the commitment.
I hope I am wrong!
It isn't that different from belief. It just seems better because it is based on a physical theory. It isn't about what is proven empirically but about what feels more likely based on the current empirical proof.
> "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"
I don't agree with that, and I don't think most people do.
> I am delighted to see brave physicists making ontological commitments - perhaps they are not aware of the tangled web that awaits them.
Remember that almost all physicists have no philosophy education, including those making ontological commitments.
> Please, please, please read Fine's book.
I probably won't, sorry. I am reading Marx and Hegel right now. Maybe in a decade or two.
> Einstein was a realist, and was extensively ridiculed for it.
I don't think so. A lot of people still think like Einstein or admire his commitment to a complete theory of reality. That's why we still have a lot of people interested in Bohmian mechanics.
> I wouldn't be surprised if there are no actual ontological realists in physics today
Most physicists are taught the Copenhagen interpretation with the first principle stated as "the wavefunction is the full physical state of the system".
> natural ontological attitude
I obviously don't know what that is
I think you are projecting a sense of philosophical expertise that is absolutely not present in modern physics. Again remember that almost all of us have literally zero training in any kind of philosophy. I am from the UK system, in the UK we do not study philosophy in high school, and at university we literally only do lectures that are directly related to our "major". I never did a non-physics lecture. The philosophical viewpoints of physicists is entirely based on a mixture of their pre-existing social conditions (whether or not they are religious) combined with their gut reaction to the physics.
A few points, with the hope that they are helpful, but bear in mind that I am also not an expert:
1. I too, disagree with Wittgenstein, though his statement is mostly logical in context. Disagreeing here is tricky.
2. Einstein was definitely a well-documented realist, and the debate is central to what I'm trying to get at here. I tend to defend him, though I suspect I am nearly alone among 'philosophers'. I think everyone else has jumped from what they see as the sinking ship of 'realism'. I suspect it is fully sunk at this point, except for a few die-hard realists out there. (Are there any left?)
3. The "natural ontological attitude" is a realist concession. It's basically what you are talking about, with some complexities for the interested. I like it, but it doesn't resolve anything, it just says, 'this epistemological nit-picking is annoying - I'm just saying that "it just seems better because it is based on a physical theory..."
My apologies for being pretentious or presumptuous about philosophical concepts. I just wish there were more open discussion of where these spheres overlap. Again, thank you for your critical thoughts here.
And truly, read the Fine book in a decade or whenever. It's amazing.
I would be interested in this paper. Lamb argued the same, with good intention, but not everybody was impressed.
EDIT: Also it of course references Lamb's paper, which I don't think was badly received afaik, just not really widely considered
I am afraid this is already the orthodox view, despite the suggestive/misleading pictures used when teaching particle physics (e.g. Compton's scattering).
But even the well-informed photon concept where a photon isn't a point, isn't a plane wave, and usually there is indefinite number of them, is quite horrible. I hope some day the status quo will move where we realize that both the hand wavy imprecise photon talk in textbooks/pop-sci books and the sophist "just a figure of speech when we're talking about quantum field" will be abandoned in favor of more accurate technical terms.
I actually think it's the opposite. The PBR theorem even says that the wavefunction is ontological in some sense. People are more willing to make ontological commitments now than they were in the early days of quantum mechanics.
> career-breaking ontological commitments
It isn't career breaking at all. My boss is literally publishing a paper about how photons ontologically do not exist. Bell's inequalities and things like non-complementarity have a much stronger hold in people's minds due to modern tabletop uses of things like quantum correlations and EPR entanglement.
I basically disagree with the premise of your post. I am a postdoc in quantum optics, specialising in high-precision measurements and quantum measurement in general, and I think people are more willing than ever to choose ontological positions on QM.