Related papers: Partitions and Objective Indefiniteness in Quantum…
In resisting attempts to explain the unity of a whole in terms of a multiplicity of interacting parts, quantum mechanics calls for an explanatory concept that proceeds in the opposite direction: from unity to multiplicity. It concerns the…
The paper proves that quantum mechanics is compatible with the constructive realism of modern philosophy of science. The proof is based on the observation that properties of quantum systems that are uniquely determined by their preparations…
Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials. However there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers…
Since the pioneering work of Birkhoff and von Neumann, quantum logic has been interpreted as the logic of (closed) subspaces of a Hilbert space. There is a progression from the usual Boolean logic of subsets to the "quantum logic" of…
How can quantum mechanics be (i) the fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics and (ii) a probability calculus that presupposes the events to which, and on the basis of which, it assigns probabilities? The question is…
A hypothetical formulation of quantum mechanics is presented so as to reconcile it with macro-realism. On the analogy drawn from thermodynamics, an objective description of wave packet reduction is postulated, in which a characteristic…
This paper traces an intellectual journey or \textit{Way} (in the sense of a Tao) that starts with some unfinished work of Gian-Carlo Rota on making a logic of equivalence relations or partitions. Rota understood the category-theoretic…
First, this article considers the nature of quantum reality (the reality responsible for quantum phenomena) and the concept of realism (our ability to represent this reality) in quantum theory, in conjunction with the roles of locality,…
The discussion of the foundations of quantum mechanics is complicated by the fact that a number of different issues are closely entangled. Three of these issues are i) the interpretation of probability, ii) the choice between realist and…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
An interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is presented in the spirit of Erwin Madelung's hydrodynamic formulation of QM and Louis de Broglie's and David Bohm's pilot wave models. The aims of the approach are as follows: 1) to…
Familiar formulations of classical and quantum mechanics are shown to follow from a general theory of mechanics based on pure states with an intrinsic probability structure. This theory is developed to the stage where theorems from quantum…
The problem of understanding quantum mechanics is in large measure the problem of finding appropriate ways of thinking about the spatial and temporal aspects of the physical world. The standard, substantival, set-theoretic conception of…
Quantum set theory (QST) and topos quantum theory (TQT) are two long running projects in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics that share a great deal of conceptual and technical affinity. Most pertinently, both approaches…
In a previous preprint (quant-ph/0012122) we introduced a ``contextual objectivity" formulation of quantum mechanics (QM). A central feature of this approach is to define the quantum state in physical rather than in mathematical terms, in…
The term proposition usually denotes in quantum mechanics (QM) an element of (standard) quantum logic (QL). Within the orthodox interpretation of QM the propositions of QL cannot be associated with sentences of a language stating properties…
Modal interpretations have the ambition to construe quantum mechanics as an objective, man-independent description of physical reality. Their second leading idea is probabilism: quantum mechanics does not completely fix physical reality but…
We show how quantum mechanics can be understood as a space-time theory provided that its spatial continuum is modelled by a variable real number (qrumber) continuum. Such a continuum can be constructed using only standard Hilbert space…
We introduce a formulation of quantum theory (QT) as a general probabilistic theory but expressed via quasi-expectation operators (QEOs). This formulation provides a direct interpretation of density matrices as quasi-moment matrices. Using…