Whiteheadian Quantum Ontology

Abstract

Upon completing my article entitled The Copenhagen Interpretation (Stapp 1972), I sent the manuscript to Heisenberg for his approval or reaction. He expressed general approval, but raised one point:

There is one problem I would like to mention, not in order to criticize the wording of your paper, but for inducing you to more investigation of this special point, which however is a very deep and old philosophical problem. When you speak about the ideas (especially in [section 3.4]) you always speak of human ideas, and the question arises, do these ideas ‘exist’ outside of the human mind or only in the human mind? In other words: have these ideas existed at the time when no human mind existed in the world?

He continued:

I am enclosing the English translation of a passage in one of my lectures in which I have tried to describe the philosophy of Plato with regard to this point. The English translation was done by an American philosopher who, as I think, uses the philosophical nomenclature correctly. Perhaps we could connect this Platonic idea with pragmatism by saying: It is ‘convenient’ to consider the ideas as existing outside the human mind because otherwise it would be difficult to speak about the world before human minds have existed.