Related papers: Physical Realities from Simple Philosophical Conje…
If a wave function does not describe microscopic reality then what does? Reformulating quantum mechanics in path-integral terms leads to a notion of "precluded event" and thence to the proposal that quantal reality differs from classical…
In the first part of the paper I argue that an ontology of events is precise, flexible and general enough so as to cover the three main alternative formulations of quantum mechanics as well as theories advocating an antirealistic view of…
After about a century since the first attempts by Bohr, the interpretation of quantum theory is still a field with many open questions. In this article a new interpretation of quantum theory is suggested, motivated by philosophical…
The basic physical problems that necessitated the emergence of quantum physics are summarized, along with the elements of wave mechanics and its traditional statistical interpretation. Alternative interpretations to the statistical one,…
How can we explain the strange behavior of quantum and relativistic entities? Why do they behave in ways that defy our intuition about how physical entities should behave, considering our ordinary experience of the world around us? In this…
The probabilistic predictions of quantum theory are conventionally obtained from a special probabilistic axiom. But that is unnecessary because all the practical consequences of such predictions follow from the remaining, non-probabilistic,…
After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago, there ensued a quest to understand the often counterintuitive predictions of the theory. These endeavors invariably begin with the assumption of the "truth"…
In a recent result, Frauchiger and Renner argue that if quantum theory accurately describes complex systems like observers who perform measurements, then "we are forced to give up the view that there is one single reality." Following a…
Quantum theory can be understood as pointing to an ontology of relations. I observe that this reading of quantum mechanics is supported by the ubiquity of relationality in contemporary fundamental physics, including in classical mechanics,…
The problem of understanding quantum mechanics is in large measure the problem of finding appropriate ways of thinking about the spatial and temporal aspects of the physical world. The standard, substantival, set-theoretic conception of…
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems themselves. This is only possible in very…
Why are the laws of physics formulated in terms of complex Hilbert spaces? Are there natural and consistent modifications of quantum theory that could be tested experimentally? This book chapter gives a self-contained and accessible summary…
Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying…
From the analysis of the quantum and relativistic properties of the particles it results the unified quantum-relativistic dynamics of the physical reality (Universe).
Taking into account the results that we have been obtained during the last decade in the foundations of quantum mechanic we put forward a view on reality that we call the 'creation discovery view'. In this view it is made explicit that a…
To understand the foundations of quantum mechanics, we have to think carefully about how theoretical concepts are rooted in -- and limited by -- the nature of experience, as Bohr attempted to show. Geometrical pictures of physical phenomena…
Quantum and classical mechanics are derived using four natural physical principles: (1) the laws of nature are invariant under time evolution, (2) the laws of nature are invariant under tensor composition, (3) the laws of nature are…
An attempt is made to formulate quantum mechanics (QM) in physical rather than in mathematical terms. It is argued that the appropriate conceptual framework for QM is "contextual objectivity", which includes an objective definition of the…
We argue that quantum theory is a low-energy effective theory which emerges from some sub-quantum level theory which is of an undulatory and translocal character. We show the close connection of quantum theory with both gravity and the…
The program of a physical concept of information is outlined in the framework of quantum theory. A proposal is made for how to avoid the introduction of axiomatic observables. The conventional (collapse) and the Everett interpretations of…