Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Niels Bohr is standardly read as an instrumentalist or a cautious anti-realist. By way of a rational reconstruction, I argue that his philosophy of experiment advances a transcendental account of the conditions under which physical properties can count as objective at all. On this view, complementarity constrains the forms of description through which physical properties become determinate and communicable. Existing transcendental readings stop at this point; I argue that his philosophy of experiment contains the resources to go further. Objectivity is not merely constituted by such conditions but physically enacted through the observer’s choice of experimental context. This means moving beyond representational and observer-independent forms of realism and adopting a participatory realism in which objectivity is reconceived as the intersubjective stability across observers who experiment (and thus experience) within a shared mode of possible experience. The slogan ‘to be is to measure’ is not defended as an ontological thesis but as shorthand for the claim that physical properties become determinate only within experimental contexts that embodied observers of a particular class enact and share.
Source: Synthese
Author: James Vafiadis
Institutions: Deakin University, The University of Queensland
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,190
OpenAlex ID: W7221507099