English

Quantum Mechanics and Perspectivalism

History and Philosophy of Physics 2019-01-08 v2

Abstract

Experimental evidene of the last decades has made the status of "collapses of the wave function" even more shaky than it already was on conceptual grounds: interference effects turn out to be detectable even when collapses are typically expected to occur. Non-collapse interpretations should consequently be taken seriously. In this paper we argue that such interpretations suggest a perspectivalism according to which quantum objects are not characterized by monadic properties, but by relations to other systems. Accordingly, physical systems may possess different properties with respect to different "reference systems". We discuss some of the relevant arguments, and argue that perspectivalism both evades recent arguments that single-world interpretations are inconsistent and eliminates the need for a privileged rest frame in the relativistic case.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.09307,
  title  = {Quantum Mechanics and Perspectivalism},
  author = {Dennis Dieks},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.09307},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Second version of a manuscript originally coming from a talk in Buenos Aires 2017. To appear as a chapter in "Quantum Worlds", O. Lombardi et al. (eds.), Cambridge UP, 2019

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:00:06.665Z