IQOQI interdisciplinary workshop

October 21-23, 2026

When, 100 years ago, the groundwork of modern quantum theory was laid in a series of memorable papers by the physicists of the Göttingen School, not everybody was enthusiastic about the highly abstract nature of their approach. Einstein and Schrödinger, for instance, felt that the conceptualchallenges posed by the theory’s intrinsic indeterminism had been somehow swept under the carpet, and the extent to which quantum mechanics seemed to defy the very possibility of a rational account of experience had not been properly thematized. The echo of this controversy is discernable in today’s interpretive debate, in which the concerns that the ‘realist’ formulations of the theory are intended to address are often simply dismissed by the advocates of purely ‘operational’ approaches.

Operational methods in theoretical physics are often associated with a pragmatic stance which is supposed to provide a natural antidote against metaphysical worries – hence, in particular, worries caused by quantum indeterminism. With some justification, however, realist critics have questioned the idea that merely adopting an agnostic, instrumentalistic attitude towards the symbolism may be sufficient to get rid of the apparent inconsistencies of quantum mechanics. Indeed, it can be argued that the inconsistencies are removed only at the price of implicitly introducing circular or regressive patterns in the definition of such primitive notions as ‘measurement’ – a feature that may be expected decisively to affect the heuristic power of operational approaches when it comes to devising new theories.

With this conference, we propose to critically assess the tenability of the operational approach by taking a step beyond the realism vs instrumentalism controversy. We purport to do so not so much by analyzing the connection of current operational approaches with their more or less direct ancestors (such as logical positivism, conventionalism, Bridgman’s operationalism, German Konstruktivismus, operational quantum logic…) as by bringing into focus a tradition which, aside from Niels Bohr’s foresighted proposals, has remained virtually absent from the philosophical debate on quantum mechanics: that of analytic linguistic pragmatism, with its radical critique of the ‘representationalist’ notions inherent in the traditional paradigm of semantic explanation and cognitive activity.

It is suggestive, and perhaps not accidental, that the shift of philosophical paradigm triggered by Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s seminal reflection on normativity, meaning, and the a priori took place in the very same years in which quantum indeterminism was reshaping physics. We propose to assess the current operational approaches to physics against this particular philosophical background, by exploring the difficulties implied in the views which identify rules as semantically primitive as well as their potential when it comes to ‘making sense’ of mathematical structures.