Related papers: Ontological Motivation in Obtaining Certain Quantu…
In this paper, epistemology and ontology of quantum states are discussed based on a completely new way of founding quantum theory. The fundamental notions are conceptual variables in the mind of an observer or in the joint minds of a group…
The scientific methodology based on two descriptive levels, ontic (reality as it is ) and epistemic (observational), is briefly presented. Following Schr\"odinger, we point to the possible gap between these two descriptions. Our main aim is…
The Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph (PBR) no-go theorem provides an argument for the reality of the quantum state by ruling out {\psi}-epistemic ontological theories, in which the quantum state is of a statistical nature. It applies under an…
In this article we present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal of physics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any…
What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…
Towards the end of 2011, Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph derived a theorem that aimed to show that the quantum state must be ontic (a state of reality) in a broad class of realist approaches to quantum theory. This result attracted a lot of…
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 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…
It is suspected that the quantum evolution equations describing the micro-world as we know it are of a special kind that allows transformations to a special set of basis states in Hilbert space, such that, in this basis, the evolution is…
The status of the quantum state is perhaps the most controversial issue in the foundations of quantum theory. Is it an epistemic state (state of knowledge) or an ontic state (state of reality)? In realist models of quantum theory, the…
There is a longstanding debate on the metaphysical relation between quantum states and the systems they describe. A series of relatively recent {\psi}-ontology theorems have been taken to show that, provided one accepts certain assumptions,…
Studying the extent to which realism is compatible with quantum mechanics teaches us something about the quantum mechanical universe, regardless of the validity of such realistic assumptions. It has also recently been appreciated that these…
Contextuality is a central feature of quantum theory, traditionally understood as the impossibility of reproducing quantum measurement statistics using noncontextual ontological models. We study classical ontological descriptions in which a…
The ontological model framework provides a rigorous approach to address the question of whether the quantum state is ontic or epistemic. When considering only conventional projective measurements, auxiliary assumptions are always needed to…
The excited states of a charged particle interacting with the quantized electromagnetic field and an external potential all decay, but such a particle should have a true ground state--one that minimizes the energy and satisfies the…
The aim of this article is to represent the general description of an entity by means of its states, contexts and properties. The entity that we want to describe does not necessarily have to be a physical entity, but can also be an entity…
In contrast to the Copenhagen interpretation we consider quantum mechanics as universally valid and query whether classical physics is really intuitive and plausible. - We discuss these problems within the quantum logic approach to quantum…
Quantum mechanics states that a particle emitted at point (x_1,t_1) and detected at point (x_2,t_2) does not travel along a definite path between the two points. This conclusion arises essentially from the analysis of the two-slit…
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…
In this paper, we show that Quantum Mechanics does not admit ontological models, in the sense that the quantum state of a system cannot correspond to a set of physical states representing the independent reality of the system. We show, via…