Measuring Measuring

TL;DR

This paper explores the nature of measurements in physics, emphasizing the importance of empirical traceability and interaction, and discusses how contextuality influences the tangibility of measurements beyond quantum mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a framework linking measurement contextuality with empirical traceability, highlighting the epistemological conflict between tangible interactions and observer-independent results.

Findings

Contextuality renders interactions empirically tangible.

Measurement problems extend beyond quantum mechanics.

Tangible interactions conflict with spectator theories.

Abstract

Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that our contact with the world is empirically warranted. Therefore, we study theories that satisfy the following assumption: Interactions are accounted for so that they are empirically traceable, and observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. Examining, with regard to these assumptions, an abstract representation of measurements with tools from quantum logic leads us to contextual theories. Contextuality becomes a means to render interactions, thus also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement becomes problematic---also beyond quantum mechanics---if one tries to commensurate the assumption of tangible interactions with the notion of a spectator theory, i.e., with the idea that measurement results are read off without effect. The problem, thus, presents itself as the collision of different epistemological stances with repercussions beyond quantum mechanics.