Pragmatism Works: Essays on Quantum Theory, Science, and Metaphysics

Pragmatism Works presents what became a unified pragmatist view of quantum theory, science, and metaphysics developed over the past fifteen years. The essays show what work pragmatism can do in philosophy, but also in science. Indeed, the distinction between science and philosophy is relatively recent. The word 'science' originally denoted theoretical knowledge of any kind, not just of the natural world. Only after the scientific revolution did it come to have its more specialized modern meaning. The term 'natural philosophy' referred to a branch of philosophy encompassing any systematic study of the natural world. While the essays are all contributions to natural philosophy, some were originally published in physics journals and others in philosophy journals. Some chapters appeared originally in edited volumes, while two appear here for the first time. Many of these essays concern the proper understanding of a particular physical theory or quantum theory. Ideas from contemporary pragmatist philosophers proved pivotal in seeking a better understanding. One hundred years after Heisenberg's seminal paper, there is still no expert consensus on how quantum theory should be understood. Later essays further develop and defend a pragmatist view of quantum theory against views of other physicists and philosophers. These essays draw on additional pragmatist ideas, about the nature and function of truth and about objectivity. The use of pragmatist ideas in understanding quantum theory prompts their wider application. Later essays explore consequences of pragmatism for general topics in the philosophy of science and for the relations between science and metaphysics. Two address the topic of scientific laws by taking these to have epistemic and practical functions facilitated by their role in licensing reliable inferences. Some scientific explanations fit phenomena into a causal framework designed to satisfy our practical need to control our world. Others provide the epistemic satisfaction of unifying our shared system of belief. Inquiries into the metaphysics of laws, causation, and explanation are misdirected, as are attempts to extract metaphysical conclusions from quantum probability, entanglement, and space-time emergence in quantum gravity.