Related papers: A classification scheme for interpretations of Qua…
This note presents a concise and non-polemical comparison of several major interpretations of quantum mechanics, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between FAPP-solutions ("For All Practical Purposes'') versus ontological…
Quantum mechanics is more than the derivation of straightforward theorems about vector spaces, Hilbert spaces and functional analysis. In order to be applicable to experiment and technology, those theorems need interpretation and meaning.…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
In glaring contrast to its indisputable century-old experimental success, the ultimate objects and meaning of quantum physics remain a matter of vigorous debate among physicists and philosophers of science. This article attempts to shed new…
One area of physics education research has focused on the nature of ontologies (mental categorizations of concepts, substances and processes), and how they might be used to gain insight into student thinking when learning classical physics.…
One of the basic observations of the classical world is that physical entities are real and can be distinguished from each other. However, within quantum theory, the idea of physical realism is not well established. A framework to analyse…
These notes review a description of quantum mechanics in terms of the topology of spaces, basing on the axioms of Topological Quantum Field Theory and path integral formalism. In this description quantum states and operators are encoded by…
In this work, we present a logical formalism for reasoning about quantum systems in finite dimension. Contrary to the usual approach in quantum logic, our formalism is based classical first-order logic, which allows us to use the tools of…
Motivated by the question what it is that makes quantum mechanics a holistic theory (if so), I try to define for general physical theories what we mean by `holism'. For this purpose I propose an epistemological criterion to decide whether…
The process of cognition is analysed to adjust the set theory to physical description. Postulates and basic definitions are revised. The specific sets of predicates, called presets, corresponding to the physical objects identified by an…
A new quantum ontology of quantum mechanics has been proposed recently. This ontology is based on impossible to realize measurements which need to be performed repeatedly on the same single physical system or on the same pair of physical…
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…
This brief survey analyzes the epistemological implications about the role of observer in the interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. As we know, the goal of most interpretations of quantum mechanics is to avoid the apparent intrusion of the…
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…
The quantization of classical theories that admit more than one Hamiltonian description is considered. This is done from a geometrical viewpoint, both at the quantization level (geometric quantization) and at the level of the dynamics of…
Disputes on the foundations of Quantum Mechanics often involve the conception of reality, without a clear definition on which aspect of this broad concept of reality one refers. We provide an overview of conceptions of reality in classical…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
The (consistent or decoherent) histories interpretation provides a consistent realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a logic (system of reasoning) is employed which is compatible with the Hilbert-space…
In this paper we will present an ongoing project which aims to use model theory as a suitable mathematical setting for studying the formalism of quantum mechanics. We will argue that this approach provides a geometric semantics for such…
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,…