Related papers: The paradox of classical reasoning
Quantum mechanics is more than the derivation of straightforward theorems about vector spaces, Hilbert spaces and functional analysis. In order to be applicable to experiment and technology, those theorems need interpretation and meaning.…
We discuss some conceptual issues that any approach to quantum gravity has to confront. In particular, it is argued that one has to find a theory that can be interpreted in a realist manner, because theories with an instrumentalist…
Both classical and quantum mechanics assume that physical laws are invariant under changes in the way that the world is labeled. This Principle of Decompositional Equivalence is formalized, and shown to forbid finite experimental…
There is good evidence that quantum computers are more powerful than classical computers, and that various simple modifications of quantum theory yield computational power that is dramatically greater still. However, these modifications…
A resolution of the quantum measurement problem(s) using the consistent histories interpretation yields in a rather natural way a restriction on what an observer can know about a quantum system, one that is also consistent with some results…
Although the foundations of quantum and classical physics are much different, it is often difficult to pinpoint which features of a particular system are intrinsically "quantum". Perhapse, the most clear-cut distinction between "classical"…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
In this article we argue that in quantum mechanics, and in opposition to classical physics, it is impossible to say that an isolated quantum system "owns" a physical property. Some properties of the system, its mass for example, belong to…
A correspondence of classical to quantum physics studied by Schr\"{o}\-dinger and Ehrenfest applies without the necessity of technical conjecture that classical observables are associated with Hermitian Hilbert space operators. This…
Contrary to classical semantics, the disjunction of two experimental propositions relating to pure states of a quantum system ("quantum propositions" for short) can be true even in the case where neither disjunct is true. This suggests that…
Quantum communication leads to strong correlations, that can outperform classical ones. Complementary to previous works in this area, we investigate correlations in prepare-and-measure scenarios assuming a bound on the information content…
We study the possibility to describe pure quantum states and evens with classical probability distributions and conditional probabilities and show that the distributions and/or conditional probabilities have to assume negative values,…
We reconsider the problem of the interpretation of the Quantum Theory (QT) in the perspective of the entire universe and of Bphr idea that the classical language is the language of our experience and QT acquires a meaning only with a…
Although cosmic expansion at very small distances is usually dismissed as entirely inconsequential, it appears that these extraordinarily small effects may in fact have a real and significant influence on our world. Calculations suggest…
The failure of distributivity in quantum logic is motivated by the principle of quantum superposition. However, this principle can be encoded differently, i.e., in different logico-algebraic objects. As a result, the logic of experimental…
We describe a scheme for constructing quantum mechanics in which a quantum system is considered as a collection of open classical subsystems. This allows using the formal classical logic and classical probability theory in quantum…
I distinguish two senses in which one can take a given physical theory to be `complete'. On the first, a complete physical theory is one that, in principle, completely describes physical reality. On the second, a complete physical theory is…
The apparent impossibility of extending non-relativistic quantum mechanics to a relativistic quantum theory is shown to be due to the insufficient structural richness of the field of complex numbers over which quantum mechanics is built. A…
We discuss that there is a crucial contradiction within quantum mechanics. We derive a proposition concerning a quantum expectation value under the assumption of the existence of the directions in a spin-1/2 system. The quantum predictions…
Classical mechanics can be formulated using a symplectic structure on classical phase space, while quantum mechanics requires a complex-differentiable structure on that same space. Complex-differentiable structures on a given real manifold…