I have recently read a book called "Philosophie der Physik" ["Philosophy of Physics"] (Ed. by Michael Elsfeld, Suhrkamp, 2012) and came across a number of essays of philosophers (or people claiming they did philosophy) that desperately tried to make quantum mechanics compatible with ontology, especially struggling to "solve" the measurement problem or advancing it as a reason as to why quantum mechanics are flawed (rather than questioning their ontological presuppositions).
In short the measurement problem arises from two basic principles of quantum mechanics:
A) The development of a(n undisturbed) quantum system over time is described by a wave function that satisfies the Schrödinger equation. This treats the system as being to different degrees in all possible states at the same time.
B) When a measurement is conducted only one of a discrete spectrum of macroscopically observable states of the system is measured, commonly known as the "collapse of the wave function".
The first problem/question is now whether this collapse is actually a "physical" process and how the quantum system gets back to being described by a wave function after the measurement collapse.
As second order questions arise a number of issues as to the role of the measurement apparatus, considered as a large quantum system itself, the scale on which quantum and classical phenomena couple and why quantum phenomena never seem to reach our scale even though we can couple them to macroscopic objects.
There is a very good article on a website of Stanford University, that describes the issue in more detail. I found it very readable and can only recommend it.
By ontology as an umbrella term I mean any philosophical ansatz that presupposes the existence of the world (as entirety of all objects) independent of perception or claims the necessity to identify such ontic objects in any scientific theory. In some cases these positions are also referred to as different variations of realism.
The questions I'd like to hear your (well founded) opinions about are the following:
While a simple Kantian (veil of perception) or Cartesian (deceiving god/demon) argument shows that ontology makes untenable assumptions and cannot be proven true, the question remains whether we can prove it false, or at least render it unlikely to be true by showing that it conflicts irresolvably with our empirically supported theories of physics.
Of course quantum mechanics in its particular form is not strictly necessary, so the question amounts to asking: Does any theory that is in good accordance with our quantum level experiments necessarily contain an element that conflicts with ontology?
And secondly, can a careful epistemological analysis of the concepts used in the formulation of quantum mechanics resolve the measurement problem or is it a fundamental logical flaw of the theory? This entails the question in what way it even makes sense to speak of something as a physical process that we do not observe, the prime example being the development of a quantum system according to the wave function only when it is not being observed.
I haven't really made up my mind on this subject yet and I would be interested in what you think about it.