It is shown that violation of the Born Rule leads to a breakdown of the correspondence between the quantum electromagnetic field and its classical counterpart. Specifically, the relationship of the quantum coherent state to the classical electromagnetic field turns out to imply that if the Born Rule were violated, this could result in apparent deviations from the energy conservation law applying to the field and its sources. The result, which is fully general and independent of interpretations of quantum theory, suggests (...) that the Born Rule is just as fundamental a law of Nature as are the field conservation laws. (shrink)

There is a growing realization of the need to promote a constructive dialogue between science and religion both in the scientific and the religious community. Accommodationism based on the concept of nonoverlapping magisteria is arguably the dominant trend in the effort to achieve this goal. Yet despite the fact that accommodationism has many supporters, it has so far failed to promote a productive engagement between science and religion. The article argues that such engagement requires a critical re-examination of the principal (...) tenets, self-evident truths, and intuitions by both the scientific and the religious community. It further argues that despite isolated efforts seeking to promote such re-examination in both domains, neither the scientific nor the religious establishment shows much willingness to pursue this course. Rather they prefer to follow a conservative agenda and impose limits on reason that are designed to protect the status quo. (shrink)

Protective measurement might be taken to put the last nail in the coffin of ensemble interpretations of the quantum state. My goal here is to show that even though ensemble interpretations face formidable obstacles, protective measurements don't lead to any additional difficulties. Rather, they provide us with a nice illustration of a conclusion for which we had considerable indirect evidence already, namely that quantum mechanics leads to a blurring of the distinction between the intrinsic properties of a system and the (...) statistical properties of the ensemble of which it is a member. This conclusion goes for all realist interpretations of the quantum state, both the mainstream ones that take the wave function to be a real field and the more conjectural ones that take the wave function to describe our knowledge of an ensemble. (shrink)

It has been suggested that some of the puzzles of QM are resolved if we allow that there is retrocausality in the quantum world. In particular, it has been claimed that this approach offers a path to a Lorentz-invariant explanation of Bell correlations, and other manifestations of quantum "nonlocality", without action-at-a-distance. Some writers have suggested that this proposal can be supported by an appeal to time-symmetry, claiming that if QM were made "more time-symmetric", retrocausality would be a natural consequence. Critics (...) object that there is complete time-symmetry in classical physics, and yet no apparent retrocausality. Why should QM be any different? In this note I call attention to a respect in which QM is different, under some assumptions about quantum ontology. Under these assumptions, the option of time-symmetry without retrocausality is not available in QM, for reasons intimately connected with the fundamental differences between classical and quantum physics (especially the role of discreteness in the latter). (shrink)

The attractive feature of the Everett approach is its admirable spirit of approaching the quantum puzzle with a Zen-like "beginner’s mind" in order to try to envision what the pure formalism might be saying about quantum reality, even if that journey leads to a strange place. It is argued that the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (TI), appropriately interpreted, shares the same motivation and achieves much more, with far fewer conceptual perplexities, by taking into account heretofore overlooked features of the (...) quantum formalism itself (i.e. advanced states). In particular, TI does not need to talk about brain states, consciousness, or observers (rational or otherwise). In its possibilist variant (“PTI”), it shares the realist virtues of treating state vector branches as genuine dynamical entities, without having to explain how or why all of their associated outcomes actually happen (they don’t), how to account for a plenitude of counterpart observers in some coherent notion of trans-temporal identity of the bifurcating observers (observers don’t bifurcate in TI), nor how the certainty of all outcomes could be consistent with any coherent theory of probability, let alone the Born probability (the Born probability emerges naturally in TI). In short, TI is precisely the one-world interpretation Kent is looking for in his (2010). (shrink)

Time-symmetric interpretations of quantum theory are often presented as featuring "retrocausal" effects in addition to the usual forward notion of causation. This paper examines the ontological implications of certain time- symmetric theories, and finds that no dynamical notion of causation applies to them, either forward or backward. It is concluded that such theories actually describe a static picture, in which the notion of causation is relegated to a descriptor of static relationships among events. In addition, these theories lead to an (...) epistemic rather than ontologically referring, realist view of quantum states. (shrink)

It is argued that if the non-unitary measurement transition, as codified by Von Neumann, is a real physical process, then the ‘probability assumption’ needed to derive the Second Law of Thermodynamics naturally enters at that point. The existence of a real, indeterministic physical process underlying the measurement transition would therefore provide an ontological basis for Boltzmann’s Stosszahlansatz and thereby explain the unidirectional increase of entropy against a backdrop of otherwise time-reversible laws. It is noted that the Transactional Interpretation of quantum (...) mechanics provides such a physical account of the non-unitary measurement transition, and TI is brought to bear in finding a physically complete, non-ad hoc grounding for the Second Law. (shrink)

It was first suggested by Albert that the existence of real, physical non-unitarity at the quantum level would yield a complete explanation for the increase of entropy over time in macroscopic systems. An alternative understanding of the source of non-unitarity is presented herein, in terms of the Transactional Interpretation. The present model provides a specific physical justification for Boltzmann’s Stosszahlansatz, thereby changing its status from an ad hoc postulate to a theoretically grounded result, without requiring any change to the basic (...) quantum theory. In addition, it is argued that TI provides an elegant way of reconciling, via collapse, the time-reversible Liouville evolution with the time-irreversible evolution inherent in master equations. The present model is contrasted with the GRW ‘spontaneous collapse’ theory previously suggested for this purpose by Albert. (shrink)

The Transactional Interpretation has been subject at various times to a challenge based on a type of thought experiment first proposed by Maudlin. It has been argued by several authors that such experiments do not in fact constitute a significant problem for the transactional picture. The purpose of this work is to point out that, when the relativistic level of the interpretation is considered, Maudlin-type challenges cannot even be mounted, since the putative 'slow-moving offer wave,' taken as subject to contingent (...) confirmation, does not exist. This is a consequence of the Davies relativistic quantum-mechanical version of the direct-action theory together with the asymmetry between fermionic field sources and bosonic fields. The Maudlin challenge therefore evaporates completely when the relativistic level of the theory is taken into account. (shrink)

This physics note entails a summary of an extended form of Eccles-Cartesian Interactive Dualism mind-body-multiverse paradigm called Noetic Field Theory: The Quantization of Mind (NFT), distinguished as a paradigm because it is comprehensive and empirically testable. NFT posits not only that the brain is not the seat of awareness but also that neither classical nor quantum mechanics are sufficient to describe mind as the required regime entails the new physics associated with Unified Field, UF Mechanics. This means that the brain (...) is merely a transducer (form of quantum computer) mediating mentation, sensory data and metabolic function. The so-called ‘Hard Problem’ of cognitive science arises as a category error in philosophy of mind, i.e. an incorrect posit of the question “what processes in the brain give rise to awareness” which instead should simply be queried “what processes give rise to awareness”. In the history of science whenever a hard problem has arisen it has later been shown that the underlying principles had not been understood. NFT posits these underlying principles in a comprehensive empirically testable manner solving the ancient mind-body problem in a manner that enables breaking the 1st person 3rd person barrier able to explain Psi-phenomena. The premise is that the mind-body is a naturally occurring form of ‘conscious quantum computer’ (QC), not that the QC is conscious but that it is modelled after those principles. Such QC technologies could lead to routine telepathic effect devices. (shrink)