Empirical Reality, Empirical Causality, and the Measurement Problem t

Does physics describe anything that can meaningACullv be called "#1dependent reality,, " or is it merely operational? Most physicists implicitly favor an inter-mediate standpoint, which takes quantum physics into account, but ~t4tich nevertheless strongly holds fast to quite strictly realistic ideas about apparently "'obvious facts' " concerning the macro-objects. Part 1 of this article, which is a sur-vey of recent measurement theories, shows that, when made explicit, the standpoint in question cannot beupheld. Part 2 brings forward a proposal for mak-ing minimal changes to this standpoint in such a way as to remove such objections. The "'empirical realio, " thus constructed is a notion that, to some extent, does ultimately refer to the human means of apprehension and of data processing. It nevertheless cannot be said that it reduces to a mere name just labelling a "'set of recipes that never fail. " It is shown that our usual notion of macroscopic ausali O' must be endowed with similar features