Related papers: Why Do We See a Classical World?
The measurement problem is the issue of explaining how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. Here we take a different approach. We assume that there is an objective classical system, and then ask that the standard rules…
Theories of natural language and concepts have been unable to model the flexibility, creativity, context-dependence, and emergence, exhibited by words, concepts and their combinations. The mathematical formalism of quantum theory has…
For a century, quantum theorists have been reading the mathematical entrails of quantum mechanics (QM) to divine the nature of quantum reality. But to little avail. In this paper a different approach is taken, namely to identify and explain…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
Answers to the question how a classical world emerges from underlying quantum physics are revisited, connected and extended as follows. First, three distinct concepts are compared: decoherence in open quantum systems, consistent/decoherent…
How can we explain the strange behavior of quantum and relativistic entities? Why do they behave in ways that defy our intuition about how physical entities should behave, considering our ordinary experience of the world around us? In this…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…
It is argued on the basis of certain mathematical characteristics that classical mechanics is not constitutionally suited to accomodate consciousness, whereas quantum mechanics is. These mathematical characteristics pertain to the nature of…
The origin of cosmic structure is widely regarded as quantum, yet the Universe today appears classical. Standard lore attributes this to a "quantum-to-classical" transition on super-horizon scales during inflation. Gravity plays a central…
Based on a number of experimentally verified physical observations, it is argued that the standard principles of quantum mechanics should be applied to the Universe as a whole. Thus, a paradigm is proposed in which the entire Universe is…
Duality transformations within the quantum mechanics of a finite number of degrees of freedom can be regarded as the dependence of the notion of a quantum, i.e., an elementary excitation of the vacuum, on the observer on classical phase…
Although classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are separate disciplines, we live in a world where Planck's constant \hbar>0, meaning that the classical and quantum world views must actually {\it coexist}. Traditionally, canonical…
Classical and quantum world views differ in peculiar ways. Understanding decisive quantum features -- for which no classical explanation exist -- and their interrelations is of foundational interest. Moreover, recognizing non-classical…
After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago there began a quest for how to interpret the theoretical constructs of the formalism. In fact, the pursuit of new interpretations of quantum mechanics…
We examine the dependence of quantization on global properties of a classical system. Quantization based on local properties may lead to ambiguities and inconsistency between local and global symmetries of a quantum system. Our quantization…
The gap between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics has an important interpretive implication: the Universe must have an irreducible fundamental level, which determines the properties of matter at higher levels of organization. We…
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…
It is argued that the traditional "realist" methodology of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of reality, is incompatible with the most fruitful interpretation of quantum formalism. The proof…