Related papers: Physical Realities from Simple Philosophical Conje…
Unlike mathematics, in which the notion of truth might be abstract, in physics, the emphasis must be placed on algorithmic procedures for obtaining numerical results subject to the experimental verifiability. For, a physical science is…
In resisting attempts to explain the unity of a whole in terms of a multiplicity of interacting parts, quantum mechanics calls for an explanatory concept that proceeds in the opposite direction: from unity to multiplicity. It concerns the…
Quantum theory can be derived from purely informational principles. Five elementary axioms-causality, perfect distinguishability, ideal compression, local distinguishability, and pure conditioning-define a broad class of theories of…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
Realistic quantum mechanics based on complex probability theory is shown to have a frequency interpretation, to coexist with Bell's theorem, to be linear, to include wavefunctions which are expansions in eigenfunctions of Hermitian…
The quantum reality problem is that of finding a mathematically precise definition of a sample space of configurations of beables, events, histories, paths, or other mathematical objects, and a corresponding probability distribution, for…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
After stating the author's ontic position, a collage of relevant thoughts of some distinguished foundationally-minded physicists are quoted and polemically commented upon. Thus, a kind of historical background of the recent ontic…
Dualities in physics have challenged traditional forms of scientific realism by undermining the idea that theories describe a unique underlying ontology. In this paper, we develop a new perspective on scientific realism that responds to…
Although quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories, there has been a long-standing debate about the interpretation of the wave function---the central object of the theory. Two prominent views are that (i) it…
Physical quantities and physical dimensions are among the first concepts encountered by students in their undergraduate career. In this pedagogical review, I will start from these concepts and, using the powerful tool of dimensional…
The interpretation of quantum theory known as QBism argues that many elements of the formalism have a subjective interpretation. At the same time, QBism claims to be a broadly realist program. This implies that reality in QBism must be…
The mathematical formulation of Quantum Mechanics is derived from purely operational axioms based on a general definition of "experiment" as a set of transformations. The main ingredient of the mathematical construction is the postulated…
In this paper we attempt to provide a physical representation of quantum superpositions. For this purpose we discuss the constraints of the quantum formalism to the notion of possibility and the necessity to consider a potential realm…
We propose an exercise in which one attempts to deduce the formalism of quantum mechanics solely from phenomenological observations. The only assumed inputs are the multi-time probability distributions estimated from the results of…
The key observation about quantum reality is that it often appears as if, at some moment, the probability of a quantum event becomes a definite outcome for us. A careful analysis suggests, however, that what we perceive as a definite state…
After more than a century since its birth, Quantum Theory still eludes our understanding. If asked to describe it, we have to resort to abstract and ad hoc principles about complex Hilbert spaces. How is it possible that a fundamental…
We show that the modern quantum mechanics, and particularly the theory of decoherence, allows formulating a sort of a physical metatheory of consciousness. Particularly, the analysis of the necessary conditions for the occurrence of…
The text points out that one of the main contradictions of quantum realism, which is particularly relevant to the social sciences, is the tension between the existence of an observer-independent reality and the idea that this reality is…
Quantum deformations of sets of points of the real and the complexified projective line are constructed. These deformations depend on the deformation parameter q and certain further parameters \lambda_{ij}. The deformations for which the…