Related papers: Quantum Mechanical Reality: Entanglement and Decoh…
One of the basic observations of the classical world is that physical entities are real and can be distinguished from each other. However, within quantum theory, the idea of physical realism is not well established. A framework to analyse…
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…
A version of quantum theory is derived from a set of plausible assumptions related to the following general setting: For a given system there is a set of experiments that can be performed, and for each such experiment an ordinary…
Decoherence shows how the openness of quantum systems -- interaction with their environment -- suppresses flagrant manifestations of quantumness. Einselection accounts for the emergence of preferred quasi-classical pointer states. Quantum…
Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse…
We consider the hypothesis that quantum mechanics is an approximation to another, cosmological theory, accurate only for the description of subsystems of the universe. Quantum theory is then to be derived from the cosmological theory by…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago there began a quest for how to interpret the theoretical constructs of the formalism. In fact, the pursuit of new interpretations of quantum mechanics…
We give a review of concepts related to connection of classical and quantum theories, from the phase space perspective. Quantum theory is described by non-commutative operators of coordinates and momenta, results in values having a certain…
Quantum mechanics can emerge from classical statistics. A typical quantum system describes an isolated subsystem of a classical statistical ensemble with infinitely many classical states. The state of this subsystem can be characterized by…
In the present work, quantum theory is founded on the framework of consciousness, in contrast to earlier suggestions that consciousness might be understood starting from quantum theory. The notion of streams of consciousness, usually…
The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural…
Entanglement, a defining property of quantum mechanics in which two physical subsystems cannot be seen as independent entities, challenges our everyday experience and classical intuition. However, only such strong quantum correlations…
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…
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…
We argue that Anton Zeilinger's "foundational conceptual principle" for quantum mechanics according to which an elementary system carries one bit of information is an idealistic principle, which should be replaced by a realistic principle…
It is argued that there is no evidence for causality as a metaphysical relation in quantum phenomena. The assumption that there are no causal laws, but only probabilities for physical processes constrained by symmetries, leads naturally to…
As illustrated by Schrodingers cat, there are often several macroscopically different versions of reality simultaneously existing in the wave function. On the face of it, this would seem to imply that an observer could perceive a…
Quantum theory predicts probabilities as well as relative phases between different alternatives of the system. A unified description of both probabilities and phases comes through a generalisation of the notion of a density matrix for…
Deviations from classical physics when distant quantum systems become correlated are interesting both fundamentally and operationally. There exist situations where the correlations enable collaborative tasks that are impossible within the…