Related papers: Quantum Physics and Human Language

I offer an account of how the quantum theory we have helps us explain so much. The account depends on a pragmatist interpretation of the theory: This takes a quantum state to serve solely as a source of sound advice to physically situated…

If quantum mechanics is taken for granted the randomness derived from it may be vacuous or even delusional, yet sufficient for many practical purposes. "Random" quantum events are intimately related to the emergence of both space-time as…

Making a linguistic theory is like making a programming language: one typically devises a type system to delineate the acceptable utterances and a denotational semantics to explain observations on their behavior. Via this connection, the…

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"…

Quantum physics, which describes the strange behavior of light and matter at the smallest scales, is one of the most successful descriptions of reality, yet it is notoriously inaccessible. Here we provide an approachable explanation of…

An analysis using classical stochastic processes is used to construct a consistent system of quantum counterfactual reasoning. When applied to a counterfactual version of Hardy's paradox, it shows that the probabilistic character of quantum…

In physics, every observation is made with respect to a frame of reference. Although reference frames are usually not considered as degrees of freedom, in all practical situations it is a physical system which constitutes a reference frame.…

Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory describing the microworld, represents one of science's greatest triumphs. It lies at the root of all modern digital technologies and offers unparalleled correspondence between prediction and…

The paper puts forward a conceptual framework in which the phenomenon of time can be presented and discussed in a proper way. We argue that change is ontologically and epistemologically a more basic phenomenon than time. Time is an abstract…

We elaborate on a new interpretation of quantum mechanics which we introduced recently. The main hypothesis of this new interpretation is that quantum particles are entities interacting with matter conceptually, which means that pieces of…

Speakers of all human languages make use of grammatical devices to express attributional qualities, feelings, and opinions as well as to provide meta-commentary on topics in discourse. In general, linguists refer to this category as…

The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics has been successfully employed in the last years to model situations in which the use of classical structures gives rise to problematical situations, and where typically quantum effects, such…

We have proposed in several recent papers a critical view of some parts of quantum mechanics (QM) that is methodologically unusual because it rests on analysing the language of QM by using some elementary but fundamental tools of…

It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense…

Though the truths of logic and pure mathematics are objective and independent of any contingent facts or laws of nature, our knowledge of these truths depends entirely on our knowledge of the laws of physics. Recent progress in the quantum…

I shall discuss some "conditions of possibility" of a quantum theory of gravity, stressing the need for solutions to some of fundamental problems confronting any attempt to apply some method of quantization to the field equations of general…

We show that several interpretations of quantum mechanics admit an ontology of objects and events. This ontology reduces the breach between mind and matter. When humans act, their actions do not appear explainable in mechanical terms but…

We present a critique of the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on different ``pictures'' that describe the time evolution of an isolated quantum system. Without an externally imposed frame to restrict these possible…

The linear mathematics of quantum mechanics gives many versions of reality instead of the single version we perceive, with the perceived version chosen at random according to a probability law. Because of these peculiarities, the theory…

Semantic degeneracy represents a fundamental property of natural language that extends beyond simple polysemy to encompass the combinatorial explosion of potential interpretations that emerges as semantic expressions increase in complexity.…