One of the most common complaints about quantum mechanics is that it has too many interpretations. The literature is crowded with wavefunction realism, hidden variables, many worlds, collapses, relational accounts, and more. This plurality is often taken as evidence that something has gone wrong—that physics has failed to converge on a coherent picture of reality.
This diagnosis is mistaken.
The proliferation of interpretations is not a pathology of quantum mechanics. It is the predictable outcome of asking a theory to do ontological work while refusing to mark the ontological terms involved.
1. What an Interpretation Is
An interpretation of quantum mechanics does not add new predictions. It does not refine the formalism to improve empirical adequacy. It leaves the physics intact.
What it does instead is answer a different kind of question: What must the world be like for this formalism to make sense?
That question is not answered by experiment. It is answered by making ontological commitments explicit—commitments about what exists, what counts as fundamental, and how explanation is supposed to work.
Once this is recognised, the existence of multiple interpretations ceases to be puzzling.
2. Empirical Equivalence and Ontological Freedom
Interpretations proliferate precisely because they are empirically equivalent. The formal structure of quantum mechanics underdetermines ontology. Multiple, incompatible world-pictures can be layered onto the same predictive machinery without affecting its success.
This underdetermination is not a temporary gap awaiting further data. It is structural. If an experimental difference emerged, the matter would no longer be interpretive.
The expectation that physics should nevertheless deliver a unique ontology is not grounded in physics itself. It is a philosophical demand placed upon the theory.
3. The Error of Treating Pluralism as Failure
Foundational debates often treat the lack of interpretive consensus as a sign that quantum mechanics is incomplete or conceptually defective. But this treats ontological convergence as a criterion of physical adequacy.
There is no reason to accept that criterion.
Physics aims at empirical constraint, not metaphysical closure. Expecting a physical theory to settle ontological disputes is like faulting a map for failing to choose a destination.
The mistake lies not in the plurality of interpretations, but in the belief that plurality should not exist.
4. Interpretations as Construals
Seen clearly, interpretations are not rival discoveries about hidden facts of the world. They are different ways of organising the same formal resources into intelligible accounts.
Each interpretation highlights certain features and suppresses others. Each brings with it a distinctive sense of what counts as explanation, simplicity, or coherence. These choices are not dictated by experiment. They reflect prior commitments about reality.
Disagreement persists because these commitments are rarely compared directly. Instead, interpretations are presented as if they were forced by the theory itself.
5. Why the Debate Never Ends
As long as interpretations are treated as candidates for the true description of reality, foundational debates will remain interminable. No amount of calculation can resolve disagreements whose source is ontological preference rather than empirical fact.
This is why the literature expands without converging. New interpretations do not replace old ones; they join them. Each offers a different way of satisfying the same unmarked demand.
What looks like stagnation is simply the absence of criteria for resolution.
6. A Different Way to Read the Proliferation
If, instead, interpretations are recognised as ontological construals layered onto a shared physical core, the situation looks very different.
Pluralism becomes intelligible rather than embarrassing. The question shifts from Which interpretation is true? to What commitments does this interpretation make, and what does it enable or foreclose?
Interpretations can then be assessed comparatively, rather than competitively. Their virtues and costs can be articulated without pretending that physics itself demands a verdict.
7. Toward Ontological Hygiene
The real problem is not that there are many interpretations, but that they are discussed without acknowledging what kind of work they are doing.
Once the ontological status of interpretations is made explicit, much of the heat drains from the debate. The expectation of a final, theory-mandated picture of reality can be relinquished without loss.
Quantum mechanics does not fail because it admits multiple interpretations.
It succeeds while leaving ontology open.
In the next post, we will examine why this openness is so often experienced as intolerable—and why the demand for metaphysical closure exerts such a strong pull, even when physics itself provides no grounds for it.
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