Related papers: Perspectives in and on Quantum Theory
In this paper, epistemology and ontology of quantum states are discussed based on a completely new way of founding quantum theory. The fundamental notions are conceptual variables in the mind of an observer or in the joint minds of a group…
An analysis of quantum measurement is presented that relies on an information-theoretic description of quantum entanglement. In a consistent quantum information theory of entanglement, entropies (uncertainties) conditional on measurement…
In this paper, we present a general theory of finite quantum measurements, for which we assume that the state space of the measured system is a finite dimensional Hilbert space and that the possible outcomes of a measurement is a finite set…
We propose an interpretation of physics named potentiality realism. This view, which can be applied to classical as well as to quantum physics, regards potentialities (i.e. intrinsic, objective propensities for individual events to obtain)…
It is shown that in two-state quantum theory, a generic quantum state can be described by a non-computable real number. In terms of this, the criterion for measurement outcome is simply and deterministically defined. This demonstration is…
I argue that we have good reason for being realist about quantum states. Though a research programme of attempting to construct a plausible theory that accounts for quantum phenomena without ontic quantum states is well-motivated, that…
Experimental evidene of the last decades has made the status of "collapses of the wave function" even more shaky than it already was on conceptual grounds: interference effects turn out to be detectable even when collapses are typically…
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
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…
We attempt to dissolve the measurement problem using an anthropic principle which allows us to invoke rational observers. We argue that the key feature of such observers is that they are rational (we need not care whether they are…
We present the quantum measurement problem as a serious physics problem. Serious because without a resolution, quantum theory is not complete, as it does not tell how one should - in principle - perform measurements. It is physical in the…
I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…
In this paper we consider theories in which reality is described by some underlying variables. Each value these variables can take represents an ontic state (a particular state of reality). The preparation of a quantum state corresponds to…
The notorious Wigner's friend thought experiment (and modifications thereof) has in recent years received renewed interest especially due to new arguments that force us to question some of the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. In…
The quantum fluctuations of a physical property can be observed in the measurement statistics of any measurement that is at least partially sensitive to that physical property. Quantum theory indicates that the effective distribution of…
Facts happen at every interaction, but they are not absolute: they are relative to the systems involved in the interaction. Stable facts are those whose relativity can effectively be ignored. In this work, we describe how stable facts…
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…
Despite various parallels between quantum states and ordinary information, quantum no-go-theorems have convinced many that there is no realistic framework that might underly quantum theory, no reality that quantum states can represent…
A non-relativistic quantum mechanical theory is proposed that describes the universe as a continuum of worlds whose mutual interference gives rise to quantum phenomena. A logical framework is introduced to properly deal with propositions…
Quantum mechanics is usually presented starting from a series of postulates about the mathematical framework. In this work we show that those same postulates can be derived by assuming that measurements are discrete interactions: that is,…