Related papers: Bohr, QBism, and Beyond
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…
The problem of understanding quantum mechanics is in large measure the problem of finding appropriate ways of thinking about the spatial and temporal aspects of the physical world. The standard, substantival, set-theoretic conception of…
Norbert Wiener and J.B.S. Haldane suggested during the early thirties that the profound changes in our conception of matter entailed by quantum theory opens the way for our thoughts, and other experiential or mind-like qualities, to play a…
Since its inception Bohmian mechanics has been generally regarded as a hidden-variable theory aimed at providing an objective description of quantum phenomena. To date, this rather narrow conception of Bohm's proposal has caused it more…
Einstein's philosophy of physics (as clarified by Fine, Howard, and Held) was predicated on his Trennungsprinzip, a combination of separability and locality, without which he believed objectification, and thereby "physical thought" and…
In a recent article O. Ulfbeck and A. Bohr (Foundations of Physics 31, 757, 2001) have stressed the genuine fortuitousness of detector clicks, which has also been pointed out, in different terms, by the present author (American Journal of…
It has been 61 years since Hugh Everett III's PhD dissertation, {\it On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics}, was submitted to the Princeton University Physics Department. After more than a decade of relative obscurity it was resurrected…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
The causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, as originally stated by deBroglie and Bohm, had several attractive features. Among these is the possibility that it could address some of the most fundamental questions on quantum phenomena.…
Fuchs and Peres (2000) claimed that standard Quantum Mechanics needs no interpretation. In this essay, I show the flaws of the arguments presented in support to this thesis. Specifically, it will be claimed that the authors conflate QM with…
The suggestion that particles of the same kind may be indistinguishable in a fundamental sense, even so that challenges to traditional notions of individuality and identity may arise, has first come up in the context of classical…
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…
QBism has long recognized quantum states, POVM elements, Kraus operators, and even unitary operations to be cut from the same cloth: They express aspects of an agent's belief system concerning the consequences (for her) of actions she might…
Quantum mechanics describes successfully numerous quantum phenomena both microscopic and macroscopic, such as superconductivity. But the controversies about quantum mechanics, in the old days and present day, reveal fundamental obscurity in…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
An out of the box intellectual path exploring the foundations of quantum mechanics is discussed in some detail, in order to clarify why a possibly different way to look at the relevant fundamental questions can be identified and can support…
Ninety years ago in 1927, at an international congress in Como, Italy, Niels Bohr gave an address which is recognized as the first instance in which the term "complementarity", as a physical concept, was spoken publicly [1], revealing…
However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…
Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by classical logic and probability theory. This has serious implications for applied disciplines…
We perform an experimental test where we directly observe light-induced electron transitions with a macroscopic spatial discontinuity. The effect is related to the fundamental indivisibility of macroscopic orbit-like quantum states…