Related papers: Quantum Interpretations
I show how quantum mechanics, like the theory of relativity, can be understood as a 'principle theory' in Einstein's sense, and I use this notion to explore the approach to the problem of interpretation developed in my book Interpreting the…
Although the present paper looks upon the formal apparatus of quantum mechanics as a calculus of correlations, it goes beyond a purely operationalist interpretation. Having established the consistency of the correlations with the existence…
The theory of probability and the quantum theory, the one mathematical and the other physical, are related in that each admits a number of very different interpretations. It has been proposed that the conceptual problems of the quantum…
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…
While in general there is no one-to-one correspondence between complex and quaternion quantum mechanics (QQM), there exists at least one version of QQM in which a {\em partial} set of {\em translations} may be made. We define these…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
All the concepts and principles necessary to understand quantum mechanics on an initial level are given in a form suitable for the non-expert. The concepts explained include visualizing the wave function, wave-particle duality, the…
This chapter, from the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics (Eleanor Knox and Alastair Wilson, eds., 2021), is an overview of the constraints that relativity places on interpretations of quantum theory. It focuses on four main…
All measurable predictions of classical mechanics can be reproduced from a quantum-like interpretation of a nonlinear Schrodinger equation. The key observation leading to classical physics is the fact that a wave function that satisfies a…
Classical linear wave superposition produces the appearance of interference. This observation can be interpreted in two equivalent ways: one can assume that interference is an illusion because input components remain unperturbed, or that…
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…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our prior work has shown that…
It is argued that the usual postulates of quantum mechanics are too strong. It is conjectured that it is possible to interpret all experiments if we maintain the formalism of quantum theory without modification, but weaken the postulates…
For a century, quantum theory has posed a fundamental challenge to philosophical thinking. On its face, it repudiates many of the key features of the mechanical conception of physical reality. However, the challenge of developing a precise,…
Quantum electrodynamics presents intrinsic limitations in the description of physical processes that make it impossible to recover from it the type of description we have in classical electrodynamics. Hence one cannot consider classical…
Testable predictions of quantum mechanics are invariant under time reversal. But the change of the quantum state in time is not so, neither in the collapse nor in the no-collapse interpretations of the theory. This fact challenges the…
The difficult issues related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics and, in particular, the "measurement problem" are revisited using as motivation the process of generation of structure from quantum fluctuations in inflationary…
This article presents a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics. It extends the meaning of ``measurement'' to include all property-indicating facts. Intrinsically space is undifferentiated: there are no points on which a world of locally…