Antirealism in sheep's clothing: Wave function realism and scientific realism

TL;DR

This paper critically examines wave function realism within scientific realism, highlighting its pragmatic stance that challenges traditional ontological commitments and raises questions about its truthfulness and broader scientific realism.

Contribution

It analyzes wave function realism's pragmatic approach, questioning its ontological claims and its implications for scientific realism.

Findings

Wave function realism commits to the wave function as a real entity.

The view avoids metaontological questions about truth.

This pragmatic stance creates tensions with scientific realism.

Abstract

Scientific realism is the philosophical stance that science tracks truth, in particular in its depiction of the world's ontology. Ontologically, this involves a commitment to the existence of entities posited by our best scientific theories; metaontologically, it includes the claim that the theoretical framework itself is true. In this article, we examine wave function realism as a case study within this broader methodological debate. Wave function realism holds that the wave function, as described by quantum mechanics, corresponds to a real physical entity. We focus on a recent formulation of this view that commits to the ontology of the wave function while deliberately avoiding the metaontological question of the framework's truth. Instead, the view is defended on pragmatic, non-truth-conductive grounds. This, we argue, raises tensions for the purported realism of wave function realism and its compatibility with scientific realism more broadly.