Related papers: Objective Probability and the Mind-Body Relation
The role of probability in quantum mechanics is reviewed, with a discussion of the ``orthodox'' versus the statistical interpretive frameworks, and of a number of related issues. After a brief summary of sources of unease with quantum…
This Chapter develops a realist information-theoretic interpretation of the nonclassical features of quantum probabilities. On this view, what is fundamental in the transition from classical to quantum physics is the recognition that…
I present a proof of the quantum probability rule from decision-theoretic assumptions, in the context of the Everett interpretation. The basic ideas behind the proof are those presented in Deutsch's recent proof of the probability rule, but…
The conventional postulate for the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is asymmetric in preparation and measurement, making retrodiction reliant on inference by use of Bayes' theorem. Here, a more fundamental symmetric…
A fundamental question in the debate about the interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM) is whether the universe is fundamentally deterministic or fundamentally probabilistic. This self-contained paper shows for a microsystem made up of a…
Probabilistic models (developped by workers such as Boltzmann, on foundations due to pioneers such as Bayes) were commonly regarded merely as approximations to a deterministic reality before the roles were reversed by the quantum revolution…
In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: 'molecular chaos.' The program…
Quantum "states" are objective probability measures. Because their dependence on a time is not the time dependence of an evolving state, they are neither states of Nature nor "states of knowledge." There is no such thing as an evolving…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…
The present paper shows how one might model Everettian quantum mechanics using hyperfinitely many worlds. A hyperfinite model allows one to consider idealized measurements of observables with continuous-valued spectra where different…
A different approach towards quantum theory is proposed in this paper. The basis is taken to be conceptual variables, physical variables that may be accessible or inaccessible, i.e., it may be possible or impossible to assign numerical…
Many advocates of the Everettian interpretation consider that theirs is the only approach to take quantum mechanics really seriously, and that this approach allows to deduce a fantastic scenario for our reality, one that consists of an…
A persistent focus on the concept of emergence as a core element of the scientific method allows a clean separation, insofar as this is possible, of the physical and philosophical aspects of the problem of outcomes in quantum mechanics. The…
The fact that certain "extraordinary" probabilistic phenomena--in particular, macroscopic violations of the second law of thermodynamics--have never been observed to occur can be accounted for by taking hard preclusion as a basic physical…
Three recent arguments seek to show that the universal applicability of unitary quantum theory is inconsistent with the assumption that a well-conducted measurement always has a definite physical outcome. In this paper I restate and analyze…
We provide a decision-theoretic framework for dealing with uncertainty in quantum mechanics. This uncertainty is two-fold: on the one hand there may be uncertainty about the state the quantum system is in, and on the other hand, as is…
In classical physics, probabilistic or statistical knowledge has been always related to ignorance or inaccurate subjective knowledge about an actual state of affairs. This idea has been extended to quantum mechanics through a completely…
The ordinary linear quantum theory predicts the quantum correlations at any distance (the universal superposition principle). It creates the decoherence problem since quantum interactions entangle states into non-separable combination. On…
A quantum probability model is introduced and used to explain human probability judgment errors including the conjunction, disjunction, inverse, and conditional fallacies, as well as unpacking effects and partitioning effects. Quantum…
QBism pursues the real by first eliminating the elements of quantum theory too fragile to be ontologies on their own. Thereafter, it seeks an "ontological lesson" from whatever remains. Here, we explore this program by highlighting three…