Related papers: Explanations from contemporary quantum theories: s…
The relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (RQM) has received a growing interest since its first formulation in 1996. Usually presented as an interpretational layer over the usual quantum mechanics formalism, it appears as a…
Epistemic interpretations of quantum mechanics fail to address the puzzle posed by the occurrence of probabilities in a fundamental physical theory. This is a puzzle about the physical world, not a puzzle about our relation to the physical…
Any representational enterprise must omit variation in order to function. NASA still uses Newtonian mechanics, though Einstein superseded Newton, and the standard picture of scientific progress cannot explain how. A description that omitted…
Familiar textbook quantum mechanics assumes a fixed background spacetime to define states on spacelike surfaces and their unitary evolution between them. Quantum theory has changed as our conceptions of space and time have evolved. But…
Quantum theory is applicable, in principle, to both the microscopic and macroscopic realms. It is therefore worthwhile to investigate whether it is possible to evolve a quantum-compatible view of the properties and states of macroscopic…
What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…
The Weltanschauung emerging from quantum theory clashes profoundly with our classical concepts. Quantum characteristics like superposition, entanglement, wave-particle duality, nonlocality, contextuality are difficult to reconcile with our…
We attempt to contribute some novel points of view to the "foundations of quantum mechanics", using mathematical tools from "quantum probability theory" (such as the theory of operator algebras). We first introduce an abstract algebraic…
The paper defends the thesis that analysis of truth problem in the context of interpretations of quantum logic allows to reveal the prospect of elicitation of specifics of the relations between quantum mechanics and quantum logic in a…
Quantum theory departs from classical physics in its treatment of correlations, most prominently through the phenomena of contextuality and nonlocality. Once regarded primarily as foundational curiosities, these effects are now understood…
Finetuning and Naturalness are extra-empirical theory assessments that reflect our expectation how scientific theories should provide an intuitive understanding about the foundations underlying the observed phenomena. Recently, the absence…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
In the absence of an external frame of reference physical degrees of freedom must describe relations between systems. Using a simple model, we investigate how such a relational quantum theory naturally arises by promoting reference systems…
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems themselves. This is only possible in very…
The terms 'semantics' and 'ontology' are increasingly appearing together with 'explanation', not only in the scientific literature, but also in organizational communication. However, all of these terms are also being significantly…
Starting from the guiding principles of spacetime locality and operationalism, a general framework for a probabilistic description of nature is proposed. Crucially, no notion of time or metric is assumed, neither any specific physical…
New status in quantum mechanics is connected with recent achievements in the inverse problem. With its help instead of about ten exactly solvable models which serve as a basis of the contemporary education there are infinite (!) number,…
Quantum theory predicts probabilities as well as relative phases between different alternatives of the system. A unified description of both probabilities and phases comes through a generalisation of the notion of a density matrix for…
Quantum theory is usually formulated in terms of abstract mathematical postulates, involving Hilbert spaces, state vectors, and unitary operators. In this work, we show that the full formalism of quantum theory can instead be derived from…
An investigation of Einstein's ``physical'' reality and the concept of quantum reality in terms of information theory suggests a solution to quantum paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and the Schroedinger-cat paradoxes.…