By now the pattern should be clear.
At this point, a familiar accusation arises:
“So this is just instrumentalism. You’re saying the wavefunction is merely a calculational device. Physics becomes a predictive tool with no commitment to reality.”
No.
That conclusion follows only if one assumes a binary inherited from classical metaphysics:
Either
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The formalism describes ontic substance directly,or
-
It is merely an instrument for organising observations.
Refusing inflation does not force that choice.
It dissolves it.
1. The False Binary
Instrumentalism treats theory as a tool for predicting measurement outcomes without ontological commitment.
Inflationary realism treats theory as a literal map of underlying substance.
Both share the same assumption:
Reality must ultimately consist of fully actualised entities with determinate properties.
If that assumption is retained, then structured potential appears either:
-
as incomplete description (hidden variables), or
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as epistemic modesty (instrumentalism), or
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as ontic multiplicity (many worlds).
But quantum theory pressures that assumption itself.
The formalism does not describe a world composed of pre-actualised, independent units.
It articulates a relational structure of possibility that constrains actualisation.
To acknowledge that is not to deny reality.
It is to revise what counts as real.
2. Structured Potential Is Not Fiction
Let us be explicit.
Structured potential is real.
Interference phenomena demonstrate that it has determinate mathematical structure.
Bell-type experiments demonstrate that this structure is irreducibly relational.
The predictive success of quantum mechanics is not accidental. It tracks something robust.
But what it tracks is not a hidden layer of fully determinate substance.
It tracks the structured field within which instances may be actualised.
It is the structured condition of possibility for actualisation.
Denying that it is instance does not reduce it to fiction.
It clarifies its mode of being.
3. Realism Without Reification
The accusation of instrumentalism assumes that realism requires reification.
If the wavefunction is real, it must be a thing.
If it is not a thing, it must be a mere instrument.
But structured potential is neither a thing nor a fiction.
It is relational structure.
Reality is not exhausted by what is already actualised.
Nor is it reducible to hidden pre-actualised facts.
Reality includes the structured potentials from which instances are drawn.
This is not anti-realism.
It is realism disciplined by grammatical clarity.
4. What Changes
Under this view:
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Physics does not describe a hidden ontic substrate.
-
Nor does it merely organise observations.
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It articulates structured relational potential.
Actual instances are not illusions.
They are actualisations under a cut.
The system is not a ghostly object.
It is the formal articulation of what may be actualised and how.
The refusal to inflate potential into substance is not retreat.
It is restraint.
It prevents us from multiplying worlds, dynamical collapses, or hidden substrates in response to problems generated by a misreading of levels.
5. The Deeper Realism
The deeper shift is this:
Classical realism assumed that reality consists fundamentally of fully actualised entities with determinate intrinsic properties.
Quantum theory undermines that picture.
But the lesson is not that reality evaporates.
It is that actuality is only one pole of reality.
The other pole is structured potential.
And that potential is irreducibly relational.
Once this is recognised, the charge of instrumentalism loses force.
We are not saying:
“Physics is just a tool.”
We are saying:
“Physics articulates the structured field of possibility within which actuality occurs.”
That is not less realist.
It is more precise.
6. The Real Crisis
The crisis in quantum interpretation was never a crisis about whether reality exists.
It was a crisis about what kind of structure reality has.
When structured potential was mistaken for ontic substance, paradox proliferated.
When that inflation is refused, two temptations arise:
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Multiply ontology.
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Or retreat into instrumentalism.
Both are reactions to the same confusion.
The alternative is neither multiplication nor retreat.
It is distinction.
System → Cut → Instance.
Potential → Actualisation.
Relational structure → Singular phenomenon.
Quantum mechanics does not force us to abandon realism.
It forces us to abandon reification.
And that is not a loss.
It is an advance in clarity.
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