Related papers: Quanta and Qualia
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
The best mathematical arguments against a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics - that gives definite but partially unknown values to all observables - are analysed and shown to be based on reasoning that is not compelling. This…
We argue that (1) our perception of time through change and (2) the gap between reality and our observation of it are at the heart of both quantum mechanics and the dynamical mechanism of physical systems. We suggest that the origin of…
Quantum mechanics, devoid of any additional assumption, does not give any theoretical constraint on the projection basis to be used for the measurement process. It is shown in this paper that it does neither allow any physical means for an…
The evolution of the human mind through natural selection mandates that our conscious experiences are causally potent in order to leave a tangible impact upon the surrounding physical world. Any attempt to construct a functional theory of…
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…
Any scientific attempt to explain consciousness is tasked with reconciling the third person objective perspective of science with our first person subjective experience of the world. A good point of departure is to consider situations in…
Quantum Darwinism offers an explanation for the emergence of classical objective features -- those we are used to at macroscopic scales -- from quantum properties at the microscopic level. The interaction of a quantum system with its…
I provide a critical commentary regarding the attitude of the logician and the philosopher towards the physicist and physics. The commentary is intended to showcase how a general change in attitude towards making scientific inquiries can be…
The evolution of a quantum system under observation becomes retarded or even impeded. We review this ``quantum Zeno effect'' in the light of the criticism that has been raised upon a previous attempt to demonstrate it, of later…
We can recognize two modes in which 'quantum appears' in macro domains: (i) a 'micro-physical appearance', where quantum laws are assumed to be universal and they are transferred from the micro to the macro level if suitable 'quantum…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
Assuming the validity of the equivalence principle in the quantum regime, we argue that one of the assumptions of the usual definition of quantum mechanics, namely separation between the ``classical'' detector and the ``quantum'' system,…
An assessment of the present status of the theory, some immediate tasks which are suggested thereby and some questions whose answers may require a longer breath since they relate to significant changes in the conceptual and mathematical…
Conceptual problems in quantum mechanics result from the specific quantum concept of reality and require, for their solution, including the observer's consciousness into quantum theory of measurements. Most naturally this is achieved in the…
The possibility to have a deviation from relativistic quantum field theory requiring to go beyond effective field theories is discussed. A few recent attempts to go in this direction both at the theoretical and phenomenological levels are…
The principle of relativity is extended to accommodate finite-mass observers with quantum properties by introducing two operational requirements: (i) equivalence of observers at the level of transition amplitudes, and (ii) the impossibility…
This paper tentatively conjectures a possible physical picture that may help explain links between quantum field theories and string theories. A correspondence might occur if the stringy parameters $\tau $ and $\sigma_i $ are interpreted as…
Recent extended formulations of the Wigner's friend thought experiment throw the measurement problem of quantum mechanics into sharper relief. Here I respond to an invitation by Renner to provide a consistent and concrete set of rules for…
It is shown that the basic equations of quantum theory can be obtained from a straightforward application of logical inference to experiments for which there is uncertainty about individual events and for which the frequencies of the…