Related papers: Relationalism vs. Bayesianism
It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense…
The developments of special relativity and quantum mechanics marked the beginning of the modern physics age. The former has taught us that while space and time are frame dependent notions, there is a quantity -- the space-time interval --…
Causality imposes strong restrictions on the type of operators that may be observables in relativistic quantum theories. In fact, causal violations arise when computing conditional probabilities for certain partial causally connected…
The relationship between classical and quantum theory is of central importance to the philosophy of physics, and any interpretation of quantum mechanics has to clarify it. Our discussion of this relationship is partly historical and…
According to a simple model of inertia a Machianized theory of special and general relativity named as relational relativity is presented.
The conflict between quantum theory and the theory of relativity is exemplified in their treatment of time. We examine the ways in which their conceptions differ, and describe a semiclassical clock model combining elements of both theories.…
It is argued that substantial portions of both Newtonian particle mechanics and general relativity can be viewed as relational (rather than absolute) theories. I furthermore use the relational particle models as toy models to investigate…
The purpose of this book is to explain Quantum Bayesianism ('QBism') to "people without easy access to mathematical formulas and equations" (4-5). Qbism is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that "doesn't meddle with the technical…
The name of John von Neumann is common both in quantum mechanics and computer science. Are they really two absolutely unconnected areas? Many works devoted to quantum computations and communications are serious argument to suggest about…
A general formulation of classical relativistic particle mechanics is presented, with an emphasis on the fact that superluminal velocities and nonlocal interactions are compatible with relativity. Then a manifestly relativistic-covariant…
We remark on John Earman's paper ``Quantum Bayesianism Assessed'' [The Monist 102 (2019), 403--423], illustrating with a number of examples that the quantum ``interpretation'' Earman critiques and the interpretation known as QBism have…
Local observation is an important problem both for the foundations of a quantum theory of gravity and for applications to quantum-cosmological problems such as eternal inflation. While gauge invariant local observables can't be defined, it…
Bayes' rule plays a crucial piece of logical inference in information and physical sciences alike. Its extension into the quantum regime has been the object of several recent works. These quantum versions of Bayes' rule have been expressed…
The problem of constructing a quantum theory of gravity is considered from a novel viewpoint. It is argued that any consistent theory of gravity should incorporate a relational character between the matter constituents of the theory. In…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
We point out a fundamental problem that hinders the quantization of general relativity: quantum mechanics is formulated in terms of systems, typically limited in space but infinitely extended in time, while general relativity is formulated…
Rovelli's relational interpretation of quantum mechanics tells us that the description of a system in the formalism of quantum mechanics is not an absolute, but it is relative to the observer itself. The interpretation goes further and…
With his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein produced a revolution in our conception of reality and of the knowledge we can obtain from it. This revolution can be viewed from philosophy as leading to one of the great paradigms in…
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…
What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…