Related papers: "Physical quantity" and " Physical reality" in Qua…
There are two broad opposing classes of attitudes to reality (realist vs idealist, material vs mental) with corresponding attitudes to knowledge (objective vs subjective, scientific vs romantic). I argue that these attitudes can be…
I contrast two possible attitudes towards a given branch of physics: as inferential (i.e., as concerned with an agent's ability to make predictions given finite information), and as dynamical (i.e., as concerned with the dynamical equations…
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…
The notion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) "element of reality" is much discussed in the literature on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Recently, it has become particularly relevant due to a proposed criterion of the physical…
The concept of "reality" is often raised in the context of philosophical foundations of physics or interpretations of quantum mechanics. When this term is so raised, it is a warning to me that I am about to be led down a rabbit hole. Such…
Philosophers of science commonly connect ontology and science, stating that these disciplines maintain a two-way relationship: on the one hand, we can extract ontology from scientific theories; on the other hand, ontology provides the…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
All investigators working on the foundations of quantum mechanics agree that the theory has profoundly modified our conception of reality. But there ends the consensus. The unproblematic formalism of the theory gives rise to a number of…
In discussion of the interpretation of quantum mechanics the terms `ontic' and `epistemic' are often used in the sense of pertaining to what exists, and pertaining to cognition or knowledge respectively. The terms are also often associated…
Inspired by philosophical ideas of Boltzmann, which are briefly recalled, we provide strong support for the possibility and convenience of a realistic world picture, properly nuanced. The arguments have consequences for the interpretation…
According to d'Espagnat we must choose between nonlinear breaks in quantum state evolution and weak objectivity. In this comment it is shown that this choice is forced on us by an inconsistent pseudo-realistic interpretation of quantum…
The main claim of the paper is that one can be 'realist' (in some sense) about quantum mechanics without requiring any form of realism about the wave function. We begin by discussing various forms of realism about the wave function, namely…
I consider the "Quantum Bayesian" view of quantum theory as expounded in a 2006 paper of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. I argue that one can accept a generally personalist, decision-theoretic view of probability, including probability as…
The concept of the physical state of a system is ubiquitous in physics but is usually presented in terms of specific cases. For example, the state of a point particle of mass m is completely characterized by its position and momentum. There…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
The distinctive features of quantum mechanics, which set it apart from other physical theories, challenge our notions of realism. Recovering realism from purely philosophical grounds, a quantitative and operational criterion was proposed in…
Stapp and others have proposed that reality involves a fundamental life process, or creative process. It is shown how this process description may be unified with the description that derives from quantum physics. The methods of the quantum…
Relational quantum mechanics (RQM) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on the idea that quantum states describe not an absolute property of a system but rather a relationship between systems. In this article, we observe that…
Physics is a model of nature able to both describe and predict the results of measurements made with respect to reference systems. These reference systems, in turn, are themselves physical and thus subject to the laws of physics. The…