Abstract

The status and justification of quantum logic are reviewed. On the basis of several independent arguments it is concluded that it cannot be a logic in the philosophical sense of a general theory concerning the structure of valid inferences. Taken as a calculus for combining quantum mechanical propositions, it leaves a number of significant aspects of quantum physics unaccounted for. It is shown, moreover, that quantum logic, far from being more general than Boolean logic, forms a subset of a slight and natural extension of Boolean logic, a subset which corresponds to incomplete statements. The philosophical background of this unsatisfactory state of affairs is briefly explored