If quantum mechanics forces us to rethink what a “measurement outcome” even is, can experiments still count as genuine evidence for any scientific theory?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Emily Adlam is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Chapman University and her work focuses on physics, especially quantum physics, and the philosophy of physics.Check out her book, "Saving Science from Quantum Mechanics: The Epistemology of the Measurement Problem"!
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-science-from-quantum-mechanics-9780197808856
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0197808859/
2. Book Summary
Emily Adlam’s Saving Science from Quantum Mechanics argues that the quantum ‘measurement problem’ isn’t just a puzzle about what exists (wavefunctions, worlds, collapses, etc.), but a threat to the epistemology of science—our right to treat experimental outcomes as evidence. She frames the central demand as a kind of “closing the circle”: a viable physical story of measurement should be coherent with the idea that measurement outcomes genuinely provide information about what’s measured. Against the background of ordinary assumptions about measurement (value-definiteness, veracity, unique outcomes, shareable records, reliable memory), quantum mechanics and results like contextuality make it hard to keep the whole intuitive package, which means some “solutions” risk making scientific knowledge fragile or even impossible.
The book then evaluates leading families of responses to the measurement problem by asking whether they preserve empirical confirmation. For Everettian (many-worlds) approaches, Adlam emphasizes the “probability problem” as an epistemic problem: if we can’t explain why observed relative frequencies should confirm the theory, Everettian QM risks empirical incoherence—undermining the very evidence that would support it. She also examines “observer-relative” approaches (including perspectival/neo-Copenhagen, relational QM, and possibly QBism), characterized by universal unitary dynamics plus unique outcomes that are nevertheless relativized to observers; a key worry is that this picture strains the expectation that different observers can straightforwardly share and align records of outcomes.
Stepping back, Adlam’s through-line is that you don’t get to quarantine these issues inside “interpretation”: changing our conception of measurement reshapes what counts as evidence for any scientific theory, since no theory is empirically confirmed without observation and measurement. She uses this lens to assess Bayesian/decision-theoretic moves and their limits for “sceptical” hypotheses like multiverses, where even the relevant priors may be ill-defined without a broader belief-revision story. And she presses that some stances—e.g. “intersubjective QBism” that severs the link between quantum states/probabilities and observed frequencies—would drain quantum mechanics of empirical content and thus of confirmation.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - The measurement problem
05:14 - Shut up and calculate
07:00 - Different senses of "measurement"
09:11 - Bootstrapping
10:18 - Relevance to scientific practice
13:18 - Quantum bayesianism
17:46 - Many worlds
20:05 - Recovering the Born rule
32:21 - Bohmian mechanics
36:09 - Probability
37:58 - All-at-once laws
42:54 - Anti-Humeanism
45:12 - Superdeterminism
48:56 - Naturalness
50:15 - Retrocausality
54:33 - Primitive ontology
57:51 - Fundamentality
1:01:41 - Consistent histories
1:04:38 - Saving quantum mechanics
1:07:25 - Making progress
1:08:38 - Value of philosophy
1:10:20 - Conclusion
