Related papers: Whose Knowledge?
At a fundamental level, the classical picture of the world is dead, and has been dead now for almost a century. Pinning down exactly which quantum phenomena are responsible for this has proved to be a tricky and controversial question, but…
New status in quantum mechanics is connected with recent achievements in the inverse problem. With its help instead of about ten exactly solvable models which serve as a basis of the contemporary education there are infinite (!) number,…
The purpose of physics is to describe nature from elementary particles all the way up to cosmological objects like cluster of galaxies and black holes. Although a unified description for all this spectrum of events is desirable, this would…
This paper studies implications of the consistency conditions among prior, posteriors, and information sets on introspective properties of qualitative belief induced from information sets. The main result reformulates the consistency…
The problematic relationship between science and philosophy has, since the beginning of modernity, divided the world into two separate domains: nature and human. Some of today's schools of philosophy and epistemological inquiry have…
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…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
This paper is the continuation of a study into the information paradox problem started by the author in his earlier works. As previously, the key instrument is a deformed density matrix in quantum mechanics of the early universe. It is…
We derive finite-dimensional quantum mechanics from a single ontological principle, that \emph{existence is constituted by distinguishability}, together with two structural commitments: finite capacity $N$ (parametric input) and…
We derive two complementarity relations that constrain the individual and bipartite properties that may simultaneously exist in a multi-qubit system. The first expression, valid for an arbitrary pure state of n qubits, demonstrates that the…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
The ``Gibbs Paradox'' refers to several related questions concerning entropy in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics: whether it is an extensive quantity or not, how it changes when identical particles are mixed, and the proper way to…
If the density matrix is treated as an objective description of individual systems, it may become possible to attribute the same objective significance to statistical mechanical properties, such as entropy or temperature, as to properties…
We can learn (more) about the state a quantum system is in through measurements. We look at how to describe the uncertainty about a quantum system's state conditional on executing such measurements. We show that by exploiting the interplay…
Analogies between quantum mechanics and sociology lead to the hypothesis that quantum objects are complex products of evolution. Like biological objects they are able to receive, to work on, and to spread semantic information. In general…
This paper presents an elementary introduction to Consistent Quantum Theory (CQT), as developed by Griffiths and others over the past 25 years. The theory is a version of orthodox(Copenhagen) quantum mechanics, based on the notion that the…
Quantum theory is indeterministic, but not completely so. When a system is in a pure state there are properties it possesses with certainty, known as actual properties. The actual properties of a quantum system (in a pure state) fully…
Bohmian mechanics allows us to understand quantum systems in the light of other quantum traits than the well-known ones (coherence, diffraction, interference, tunneling, discreteness, entanglement, etc.). Here the discussion focusses…
In this article a notion of information is presented which stresses the contextuality of quantum objects and their measurement. Mathematically this is reached by a quantification of the quantum mechanical surplus knowledge which has been…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…