Decoherence and the constitution of objectivity
pp. 347-357
in: Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, Jean Petitot (eds), Constituting objectivity, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
A transcendental interpretation of decoherence theories is presented, as a middle way between the realist and empiricist interpretations. From a transcendental standpoint, the latter interpretations are both biased. The realist one is biased in favor of formal constructs taken as descriptive of a reality more real than phenomena; and the empiricist one is biased in favor of phenomena, thus forgetting that they acquire their meaning from the formalism in which they are embedded. By contrast with these two positions, transcendental epistemology sees decoherence as one step in a stratified process of constitution of objectivity adapted to microphysical phenomena.