Related papers: How Real are Quantum States in $\psi$-ontic Models…
We explore the sense in which the state of a physical system may or may not be regarded (an) observable in quantum mechanics. Simple and general arguments from various lines of approach are reviewed which demonstrate the following no-go…
The present study attempts to provide a consistent and coherent account of what the world could be like, given the conceptual framework and results of contemporary quantum theory. It is suggested that standard quantum mechanics can, and…
The representation of numbers by product states in quantum mechanics can be extended to the representation of words and word sequences in languages by product states. This can be used to study quantum systems that generate text that has…
Certain concrete "ontological models" for quantum mechanics (models in which measurement outcomes are deterministic and quantum states are equivalent to classical probability distributions over some space of `hidden variables') are…
I investigate the extent to which the description of quantum systems by Gibbs states can be justified purely on the basis of tomographic data, without recourse to theoretical concepts such as infinite ensembles, environments, information,…
First, this article considers the nature of quantum reality (the reality responsible for quantum phenomena) and the concept of realism (our ability to represent this reality) in quantum theory, in conjunction with the roles of locality,…
Traditionally, to be a realist about something means believing in the independent existence of that something. In this line of thought, a scientific realist is someone who believes in the objective existence of the entities postulated by…
We review the Pusey-Barret-Rudolph (PBR) theorem\cite{PBR} and their setup, and arrive to the conclusion that the reality of a quantum state $\psi$ is intrinsically attached to the measurement the system described by $\psi$ has undergone.…
It is assumed that the quantum state that may describe a macroscopic system at a given instant of time is one of the eigenstates of the reduced density matrix calculated from the wave function of the system plus its environment. This…
What is the nature of reality? How should be an answer to this question? At this level, we are so deep that all our concepts are obscure. Quantum theory (QT) is at this level. The quest for interpreting it fails because the clarity of our…
The possibility of a quantum system to exhibit properties that are akin to both the classically held notions of being a particle and a wave, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the quantum description of nature. These aspects have been…
An attempt is made to formulate quantum mechanics (QM) in physical rather than in mathematical terms. It is argued that the appropriate conceptual framework for QM is "contextual objectivity", which includes an objective definition of the…
We argue about a conceptual approach to quantum formalism. Starting from philosophical conjectures (Platonism, Idealism and Realism) as basic ontic elements (namely: math world, data world, and state of matter), we will analyze the quantum…
The notion of state vector is, in quantum mechanics, as central as it is problematic, as illustrates the wealth of publications about the sub- jects, including in particular the many attempts to obtain an acceptable interpretation of…
A controversy that has arisen many times over in disparate contexts is whether quantum coherences between eigenstates of certain quantities are fact or fiction. We present a pedagogical introduction to the debate in the form of a…
The notion of "closed systems" in Quantum Mechanics is discussed. For this purpose, we study two models of a quantum-mechanical system $P$ spatially far separated from the "rest of the universe" $Q$. Under reasonable assumptions on the…
Quantum "states" are objective probability measures. Because their dependence on a time is not the time dependence of an evolving state, they are neither states of Nature nor "states of knowledge." There is no such thing as an evolving…
In order to claim that one has experimentally tested whether a noncontextual ontological model could underlie certain measurement statistics in quantum theory, it is necessary to have a notion of noncontextuality that applies to unsharp…
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.…
Masanes, Galley and M\"uller [1] argue that the measurement postulates of non-relativistic quantum mechanics follow from the structural postulates together with an assumption they call the "possibility of state estimation". Their argument…