Reconsidering Bohr's reply to EPR
Abstract
Description
Although Bohr's reply to the EPR argument is supposed to be a watershed moment in the development of his philosophy of quantum theory, it is difficult to find a clear statement of the reply's philosophical point. Moreover, some have claimed that the point is simply that Bohr is a radical positivist. In this paper, we show that such claims are unfounded. In particular, we give a mathematically rigorous reconstruction of Bohr's reply to the \emph{original} EPR argument that clarifies its logical structure, and which shows that it does not rest on questionable philosophical assumptions. Rather, Bohr's reply is dictated by his commitment to provide "classical" and "objective" descriptions of experimental phenomena.
24 pages, LaTeX; Contribution to NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Modality, Probability, and Bell's Theorems", Cracow, Poland, August 19-23, 2001
24 pages, LaTeX; Contribution to NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Modality, Probability, and Bell's Theorems", Cracow, Poland, August 19-23, 2001