The Copenhagen interpretation, and pragmatism1

In the past both instrumentalism and empiricism have inspired certain pragmatic elements into the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechan-ics. The relation of such pragmatisms with the correspondence principle is discussed. It is argued that neither Bohr nor Heisenberg did take ‘correspon-dence ’ in one of these forms, and that it, in particular, was Bohr’s classical attitude which caused him to apply in an inconsistent way his correspondence principle to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment, thus causing much con-fusion. It is demonstrated that an empiricist pragmatism is conducive to an explanation of violation of the Bell inequalities as a consequence of ‘comple-mentarity ’ in the sense of ‘mutual disturbance in a joint nonideal measurement of incompatible observables ’ rather than as being caused by ‘nonlocal influ-ences’.