Related papers: Quantum Reality, Perspectivalism and Covariance
In a recent preprint [1] Jeffrey Bub presents a discussion of neo-Bohrian interpretations of quantum mechanics, and also of von Neumann's work on infinite tensor products [2]. He rightfully writes that this work provides a theoretical…
The paradox of Wigner's friend challenges the objectivity of description in quantum theory. A pragmatist interpretation can meet this challenge by judicious appeal to decoherence. On this interpretation, quantum theory provides situated…
Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials. However there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers…
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
My discussions with John Bell about reality in quantum mechanics are recollected. I would like to introduce the reader to Bell's vision of reality which was for him a natural position for a scientist. Bell had a strong aversion against…
According to scientific realism, science gives us an approximately true description of what the world is like. But what does it mean? In this chapter, we focus on the ontological and metaphysical aspects of this discussion. That is, we are…
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…
An investigation of Einstein's ``physical'' reality and the concept of quantum reality in terms of information theory suggests a solution to quantum paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and the Schroedinger-cat paradoxes.…
How should we interpret physical theories, and especially quantum theory, if we drop the assumption that we should treat it as an exact description of the whole Universe? I expound and develop the claim that physics is about the study of…
According to d'Espagnat we must choose between nonlinear breaks in quantum state evolution and weak objectivity. In this comment it is shown that this choice is forced on us by an inconsistent pseudo-realistic interpretation of quantum…
In this article we are willing to give some first steps to quantum mechanics and a motivation of quantum mechanics and its interpretation for undergraduate students not from physics. After a short historical review in the development we…
The article explores challenges presented by revelations in physics and the questions they provoke concerning reality. It sheds light on the disparity between the indefinite nature of quantum reality and our perception of classical reality.…
In our effort to restate a "realistic" approach to quantum mechanics, that would fully acknowledge that local realism is untenable, we add a few more questions and answers to the list presented in quant-ph/0203131. We also suggest to…
The idea of quantum relativity as a generalized, or rather deformed, version of Einstein (special) relativity has been taking shape in recent years. Following the perspective of deformations, while staying within the framework of Lie…
Standard quantum mechanics undeniably violates the notion of separability that classical physics accustomed us to consider as valid. By relating the phenomenon of quantum nonseparability to the all-important concept of potentiality, we…
Many attempts have been made to characterise and solve the infamous measurement problem of quantum mechanics by advocating, implicitly or explicitly, different realist perspectives. As a result, we are still uncertain where this problem and…
According to various no-go results in the foundations of quantum mechanics, for any system associated to a Hilbert space of dimension higher than two, it is not possible to assign definite truth values to all propositions pertaining to the…
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…
The main claim of the paper is that one can be 'realist' (in some sense) about quantum mechanics without requiring any form of realism about the wave function. We begin by discussing various forms of realism about the wave function, namely…
We offer a fresh perspective on the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics as a way of thinking about the world described by quantum theory based on quantifiable notions of information. This allows us to provide a definition of a…