Howard, Don: EPR and the Hole Argument: In What Sense Did Einstein Think Quantum Mechanics Incomplete?

EPR and the Hole Argument: In What Sense Did Einstein Think Quantum Mechanics Incomplete?

Recent scholarship has located the argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics in the context of a broader discussion in the late-1920s and early 1930s, involving figures like Heisenberg and Dirac, of some form of theoretical "closure" as a desirable feature of fundamental physical theory. This paper argues that the sense of "completeness" at work in Einstein's mid-1930s critique of quantum mechanics has its roots not in, or not directly in, the Gödelian notion of deductive completeness but in the requirement of "Eindeutigkeit" or univocalness that Einstein had earlier deployed in the "hole" and "point-coincidence" arguments in general relativity. The EPR argument therefore exhibits, in yet another way, insufficiently appreciated connections in Einstein's thinking between the foundations of quantum mechanics and the foundations of space-time theory.