Related papers: The Quantum Master and its Classical Emissary
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
I give a pedagogical overview of decoherence and its role in providing a dynamical account of the quantum-to-classical transition. The formalism and concepts of decoherence theory are reviewed, followed by a survey of master equations and…
t is well known that the difference between Quantum Mechanics and Classical Theory appears most crucially in the non Classical spin half of the former theory and the Wilson-Sommerfelt quantization rule. We argue that this is symptomatic of…
After a summary of Bohr's views and their relation to Kant's theory of science, two fruitless lines of attack on the measurement problem are discussed: the way of the psi-ontologist and the way of the QBist. In the remainder of the paper…
Quantum computing and the workings of the brain have many aspects in common and have been attracting increasing attention in academia and industry. The computation in both is parallel and non-discrete. Though the underlying physical…
We describe a general approach to modeling rational decision-making agents who adopt either quantum or classical mechanics based on the Quantum Bayesian (QBist) approach to quantum theory. With the additional ingredient of a scheme by which…
The brain is composed of electrically excitable neuronal networks regulated by the activity of voltage-gated ion channels. Further portraying the molecular composition of the brain, however, will not reveal anything remotely reminiscent of…
The validity of the assertion that some recent double-slit interference experiments, conducted by Radin et al., would have tested the possible role of the experimenter's mind in the collapse of the quantum wave function, is questioned. It…
This is a philosophical paper in favor of the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum theory. The concept of the ``measure of existence of a world'' is introduced and some difficulties with the issue of probability in the framework of…
In this paper, we investigate the connection between Classical and Quantum Mechanics by dividing Quantum Theory in two parts: - General Quantum Axiomatics (a system is described by a state in a Hilbert space, observables are self-adjoint…
According to a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, the causal role of human consciousness in the measuring process is called upon to solve a foundational problem called the "measurement problem". Traditionally, this…
From the philosopher's perspective, the interest in quantum computation stems primarily from the way that it combines fundamental concepts from two distinct sciences: physics (especially quantum mechanics) and computer science, each long a…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
There have lately been a variety of attempts to connect, or even explain, if not in fact, reduce human consciousness to quantum mechanical processes. Such attempts tend to draw a sharp and fundamental distinction between the role of…
Although classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are separate disciplines, we live in a world where Planck's constant \hbar>0, meaning that the classical and quantum world views must actually {\it coexist}. Traditionally, canonical…
Quantum mechanics has led not only to new physical theories, but also a new understanding of information and computation. Quantum information began by yielding new methods for achieving classical tasks such as factoring and key distribution…
It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that…
This is a philosophical paper. It claims that there is a gap to be filled in the relationship between complexity theory (CT) and quantum theory (QT). This gap concerns two very distinct understandings of time. The paper provides the ground…