Related papers: Observers of quantum systems cannot agree to disag…
Agreement theorems are no-go results about rational disagreement: if two agents start from a common prior and their posterior beliefs are common knowledge, they cannot assign different probabilities to the same event. Standard treatments of…
According to Aumann's celebrated theorem, rational agents cannot agree to disagree. In other words, agents who once shared a common prior probability distribution and who have common knowledge about their posteriors cannot assign different…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
There is a multitude of interpretations of quantum mechanics, but foundational principles are lacking. Relational quantum mechanics views the observer as a physical system, which allows for an unambiguous interpretation as all axioms are…
This paper presents an epistemological perspective on quantum communication between parties that highlights the choices that must be made in order to send and obtain information. The notion of information obtained in such a communication is…
It is argued that Feynman's rules for evaluating probabilities, combined with von Neumann's principle of psycho-physical parallelism, help avoid inconsistencies, often associated with quantum theory. The former allows one to assign…
Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) treats quantum states as observer-dependent facts rather than absolute properties. While this relational stance is conceptually attractive, it raises concerns about empirical confirmation, particularly in…
The relational approach to quantum states asserts that the physical description of quantum systems is always relative to something or someone. In relational quantum mechanics (RQM) it is relative to other quantum systems, in the…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been discussed since this theme first was brought up by Einstein and Bohr. This article describes a proposal for a new foundation of quantum theory, partly drawing upon ideas from statistical…
We formulate and prove an Agreement Theorem for quantum mechanics (QM), describing when two agents, represented by separate laboratories, can or cannot maintain differing probability estimates of a shared quantum property of interest.…
In a previous paper (arXiv:1008.3661v1[quant-ph] 21 Aug 2010), we have given a purely logical proof of the Conway and Kochen Free Will theorem in QM: the freedom of the observer implies the freedom of the observed particle. Here we show…
Human beings do not observe the world from the outside, but rather are fully embedded in it. The sciences, however, often give the observer both a "god's eye" perspective and substantial a~priori knowledge. Motivated by W. Ross Ashby's…
A goal of most interpretations of quantum mechanics is to avoid the apparent intrusion of the observer into the measurement process. Such intrusion is usually seen to arise because observation somehow selects a single actuality from among…
A characteristical property of a classical physical theory is that the observables are real functions taking an exact outcome on every (pure) state; in a quantum theory, at the contrary, a given observable on a given state can take several…
The uncertainty principle, which bounds the uncertainties involved in obtaining precise outcomes for two complementary variables defining a quantum particle, is a crucial aspect in quantum mechanics. Recently, the uncertainty principle in…
The paper argues that far from challenging - or even refuting - Bohm's quantum theory, the no-hidden-variables theorems in fact support the Bohmian ontology for quantum mechanics. The reason is that (i) all measurements come down to…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
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…
Founding our analysis on the Geneva-Brussels approach to the foundations of physics, we provide a clarification and classification of the key concept of observation. An entity can be observed with or without a scope. In the second case, the…
A realist description of our universe requires a twofold concept of locality. On one hand, there are the strictly Einstein-local interactions which generate the time evolution. On the other hand, the quantum state space calls for a…