Related papers: Individuality as an illusion
It is commonly claimed that quantum mechanics makes reference to a microscopic realm constituted by elementary particles. However, as first famously noticed by Erwin Schr\"odinger, it is not at all clear what these quantum particles really…
According to the Received View identical quantum particles are a previously unknown kind of objects that do not possess individuality. In this Chapter we discuss this view, criticize it, and propose an alternative. According to this…
In this paper I consider some logical and mathematical aspects of the discussion of the identity and individuality of quantum entities. I shall point out that for some aspects of the discussion, the logical basis cannot be put aside; on the…
What is fundamentally quantum? We argue that most of the features, problems, and paradoxes -- such as the measurement problem, the Wigner's friend paradox and its proposed solutions, single particle nonlocality, and no-cloning -- allegedly…
Indistinguishability of particles is normally considered to be an inherently quantum property which cannot be possessed by a classical theory. However, Saunders has argued that this is incorrect, and that classically indistinguishable…
In the classical world one can construct two identical systems which have identical behavior and give identical measurement results. We show this to be impossible in the quantum domain. We prove that after the same quantum measurement two…
In this article we argue that in quantum mechanics, and in opposition to classical physics, it is impossible to say that an isolated quantum system "owns" a physical property. Some properties of the system, its mass for example, belong to…
Although the foundations of quantum and classical physics are much different, it is often difficult to pinpoint which features of a particular system are intrinsically "quantum". Perhapse, the most clear-cut distinction between "classical"…
Quantum mechanics provides a statistical description about nature, and thus would be incomplete if its statistical predictions could not be accounted for by some realistic models with hidden variables. There are, however, two powerful…
Standard quantum mechanics undeniably violates the notion of separability that classical physics accustomed us to consider as valid. By relating the phenomenon of quantum nonseparability to the all-important concept of potentiality, we…
A suitable unified statistical formulation of quantum and classical mechanics in a *-algebraic setting leads us to conclude that information itself is noncommutative in quantum mechanics. Specifically we refer here to an observer's…
Quasi-set theory is a first order theory without identity, which allows us to cope with non-individuals in a sense. A weaker equivalence relation called ``indistinguishability'' is an extension of identity in the sense that if $x$ is…
In this article, we discuss the identity and indistinguishability of quantum systems and the consequent need to introduce an extra postulate in Quantum Mechanics to correctly describe situations involving indistinguishable particles. This…
Identical classical particles are distinguishable. This distinguishability affects the number of ways W a macrostate can be realized on the micro-level, and from the relation S = k ln W leads to a non-extensive expression for the entropy.…
Elementary particles are found in two different situations: (i) bound to metastable states of matter, for which angular momentum is quantized, and (ii) free, for which, due to their high energy-momentum and leaving aside inner a.m. or spin,…
The non-individuals interpretation of quantum mechanics is presented with the aim of clarifying it and highflying some of its salient features. Alternative formulations of it are proposed and examined.
The so-called Received View (RV) on quantum non-individuality states, basically, that quantum particles are not individuals. It has received an amount of criticism in the recent literature, most of it concerning the relation between the RV…
Quantum coherence, a basic feature of quantum mechanics residing in superpositions of quantum states, is a resource for quantum information processing. Coherence emerges in a fundamentally different way for nonidentical and identical…
Quantum coherence plays a fundamental and operational role in different areas of physics. A resource theory has been developed to characterize the coherence of distinguishable particles systems. Here we show that indistinguishability of…
Entanglement is often regarded as an inherently quantum feature. We show that this does not have to be the case: under restricted operational access, classical correlations can appear nonseparable when expressed in the formalism of quantum…