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Only if ‘Acrobatic Logic’ is Non-Boolean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Slawomir Bugajski
Slawomir Bugajski*
Affiliation:
Institute of Physics, Silesian University Katowice, Poland
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to defend ‘quantum logic’ against a vigorous attack of J.H. McGrath (1978). The case is serious, as he allegedly discredits quantum propositional logic showing it unmotivated and useless. The object of his criticism is the procedure of “taking a well-known theory and distilling its logic” (Finkelstein 1969), or “reading off quantum logic from quantum mechanics” (McGrath 1978). This procedure is indeed the corner stone of the quantum logic philosophy, so if it were be “discredited in a most general way” and shown to be “fundamentally misconceived” (McGrath 1978) then the idea of quantum logic has broken down. I am going to show, on the contrary, that McGrath's account of the ‘reading off’ procedure is not sufficiently precise resulting in the failure of his ‘acrobatic’ counterexample.

Type
Part IX. The Cat Paradox and Quantum Logic
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 264 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

The first draft of this paper has been written during my stay at the Institute of Physics of the Cologne University. I am greatly indebted to Professor P. Mittelstaedt and Dr. E.-W. Stachow for their warm hospitality and stimulating discussions, as well to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a financial support.

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