Related papers: Quantum Reality, Perspectivalism and Covariance
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
I take a pragmatist perspective on quantum theory. This is not a view of the world described by quantum theory. In this view quantum theory itself does not describe the physical world, nor our observatons, experiences or opinions of it.…
It is argued that the traditional "realist" methodology of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of reality, is incompatible with the most fruitful interpretation of quantum formalism. The proof…
Despite the unparalleled accuracy of quantum-theoretical predictions across an enormous range of phenomena, the theory's foundations are still in doubt. The theory deviates radically from classical physics, predicts counterintuitive…
Classical realism demands that system properties exist independently of whether they are measured, while noncontextuality demands that the results of measurements do not depend on what other measurements are performed in conjunction with…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
The common-sense view of reality is expressed logically in Boolean subset logic (each element is either definitely in or not in a subset, i.e., either definitely has or does not have a property). But quantum mechanics does not agree with…
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…
A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a ``naive realism about operators.'' By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to…
We review the notion of complementarity of observables in quantum mechanics, as formulated and studied by Paul Busch and his colleagues over the years. In addition, we provide further clarification on the operational meaning of the concept,…
Contrary to classical physics, which was strongly objective i.e. could be interpreted as a description of mind-independent reality, standard quantum mechanics (SQM) is only weakly objective, that is to say, its statements, though…
For a century, quantum theorists have been reading the mathematical entrails of quantum mechanics (QM) to divine the nature of quantum reality. But to little avail. In this paper a different approach is taken, namely to identify and explain…
.We expound an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of the formalism of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The basic difference is that the new interpretation is formulated in the language of epistemological realism. The {\psi}…
Up to now it has been impossible to find a realistic interpretation for the reduction process in relativistic quantum mechanics. The basic problem is the dependence of the states on the frame within which collapse takes place. A suitable…
In this thesis we explore the questions of what should be considered a "classical" theory, and which aspects of quantum theory cannot be captured by any theory that respects our intuition of classicality. This exploration is divided in two…
Since its emergence, quantum mechanics has been a challenge for an understanding of reality which is based on our intuition in a classical world. Nevertheless, it has often been tried to impose this understanding of reality on quantum…
Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two meta-physical types of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality with properties "all the way down," and the quantum notion of an objectively indefinite type of…
The concept of realism in quantum mechanics means that results of measurement are caused by physical variables, hidden or observable. Local hidden variables were proved unable to explain results of measurements on entangled particles tested…
Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying…
A brief account of the world view of classical physics is given first. We then recapitulate as to why the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum mechanics had to renounce most of the attractive features of the clasical world view such as…