Results for 'Everettian Quantum Mechanics'

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  1. Metaphysical indeterminacy in Everettian quantum mechanics.David Glick & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (3):1-22.
    The question of whether Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) justifies the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy has recently come to the fore. Metaphysical indeterminacy has been argued to emerge from three sources: coherent superpositions, the indefinite number of branches in the quantum multiverse and the nature of these branches. This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that those arguments don’t rely on EQM alone and rest on metaphysical auxiliary assumptions that transcend the physics of EQM. We show how (...)
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  2. Fundamentality and Levels in Everettian Quantum Mechanics.Alastair Wilson - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer.
    Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to (...)
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  3. Whence deep realism for Everettian quantum mechanics?Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo & Jonas R. Becker Arenhart - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (6):121.
    ‘Shallow’ and ‘deep’ versions of scientific realism may be distinguished as follows: the shallow realist is satisfied with belief in the existence of the posits of our best scientific theories; by contrast, deep realists claim that realism can be legitimate only if such entities are described in metaphysical terms. We argue that this methodological discussion can be fruitfully applied in Everettian quantum mechanics, specifically on the debate concerning the existence of worlds and the recent dispute between (...) actualism and quantum modal realism. After presenting what is involved in such dispute, we point to a dilemma for realists: either we don’t have the available metaphysical tools to answer the deep realist’s demands, and realism is not justified in this case, or such demands of metaphysical dressing are not mandatory for scientific realism, and deep versions of realism are not really required. (shrink)
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  4. Self-locating Uncertainty and the Origin of Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics.Charles T. Sebens & Sean M. Carroll - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1):axw004.
    A longstanding issue in attempts to understand the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics is the origin of the Born rule: why is the probability given by the square of the amplitude? Following Vaidman, we note that observers are in a position of self-locating uncertainty during the period between the branches of the wave function splitting via decoherence and the observer registering the outcome of the measurement. In this period it is tempting to regard each branch as equiprobable, (...)
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  5. Energy Non-conservation in Quantum Mechanics.Sean M. Carroll & Jackie Lodman - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 51 (4):1-15.
    We study the conservation of energy, or lack thereof, when measurements are performed in quantum mechanics. The expectation value of the Hamiltonian of a system changes when wave functions collapse in accordance with the standard textbook treatment of quantum measurement, but one might imagine that the change in energy is compensated by the measuring apparatus or environment. We show that this is not true; the change in the energy of a state after measurement can be arbitrarily large, (...)
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  6. The Argument from Locality for Many Worlds Quantum Mechanics.Alyssa Ney - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    One motivation for preferring the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over realist rivals, such as collapse and hidden variables theories, is that the interpretation is able to preserve locality (in the sense of no action at a distance) in a way these other theories cannot. The primary goal of this paper is to make this argument for the many worlds interpretation precise, in a way that does not rely on controversial assumptions about the metaphysics of many worlds.
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  7. Centered Chance in the Everett Interpretation.Jerome Romagosa - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Everettian quantum mechanics tells us that the fundamental dynamics of the universe are deterministic. So what are the `probabilities' that the Born rule describes? One popular answer has been to treat these probabilities as rational credences. A recent alternative, Isaac Wilhelm's centered Everett Interpretation (CEI), takes the Born probabilities to be centered chances: the objective chances that some centered propositions are true. Thus, the CEI challenges the `orthodox assumption’ that fundamental physical laws concern only uncentered facts. I (...)
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  8. Decoherence, Branching, and the Born Rule in a Mixed-State Everettian Multiverse.Eugene Y. S. Chua & Eddy Keming Chen - forthcoming - Synthese.
    In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend arguments for the Born rule to (...)
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  9. Everettian Confirmation and Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Wilson.Darren Bradley - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (3):683-693.
    In Bradley, I offered an analysis of Sleeping Beauty and the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I argued that one can avoid a kind of easy confirmation of EQM by paying attention to observation selection effects, that halfers are right about Sleeping Beauty, and that thirders cannot avoid easy confirmation for the truth of EQM. Wilson agrees with my analysis of observation selection effects in EQM, but goes on to, first, defend Elga’s thirder argument on Sleeping Beauty (...)
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  10. Many Worlds as Anti-Conspiracy Theory: Locally and causally explaining a quantum world without finetuning.Siddharth Muthukrishnan - manuscript
    Why are quantum correlations so puzzling? A standard answer is that they seem to require either nonlocal influences or conspiratorial coincidences. This suggests that by embracing nonlocal influences we can avoid conspiratorial fine-tuning. But that’s not entirely true. Recent work, leveraging the framework of graphical causal models, shows that even with nonlocal influences, a kind of fine-tuning is needed to recover quantum correlations. This fine-tuning arises because the world has to be just so as to disable the use (...)
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  11. Everettian Formulation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.Yu Feng - manuscript
    The second law of thermodynamics is traditionally interpreted as a coarse-grained result of classical mechanics. Recently its relation with quantum mechanical processes such as decoherence and measurement has been revealed in literature. In this paper we will formulate the second law and the associated time irreversibility following Everett’s idea: systems entangled with an object getting to know the branch in which they live. Accounting for this self-locating knowledge, we get two forms of entropy: objective entropy measuring the uncertainty (...)
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  12. Metaphysical indeterminacy in the multiverse.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer. pp. 375-395.
    One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), we bolster (...)
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  13. One world is (probably) just as good as many.Jer Steeger - 2022 - Synthese 200 (97):1-32.
    One of our most sophisticated accounts of objective chance in quantum mechanics involves the Deutsch-Wallace theorem, which uses state-space symmetries to justify agents’ use of the Born rule when the quantum state is known. But Wallace argues that this theorem requires an Everettian approach to measurement. I find that this argument is unsound. I demonstrate a counter-example by applying the Deutsch-Wallace theorem to the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory.
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  14. Incoherent? No, Just Decoherent: How Quantum Many Worlds Emerge.Alexander Franklin - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    The modern Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics describes an emergent multiverse. The goal of this paper is to provide a perspicuous characterisation of how the multiverse emerges making use of a recent account of (weak) ontological emergence. This will be cashed out with a case study that identifies decoherence as the mechanism for emergence. The greater metaphysical clarity enables the rebuttal of critiques due to Baker (2007) and Dawid and Th\'ebault (2015) that cast the emergent multiverse ontology as (...)
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  15. A Comparative Analysis of David Lewis' Modal Realism and Everett's Many Worlds on Closed Time-like Curves and Time Travel.Fabian Kerj - 2023 - Dissertation, King's College London
    This paper explores the physical and metaphysical implications of time travel, focusing on the possibility of changing the past, through a comparative analysis of David Lewis' modal realism and Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in certain solutions to Einstein's field equations provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of backwards time travel, but this leads to a range of paradoxes, most notably the grandfather paradox. David Lewis argues that time travel (...)
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  16. The physics and metaphysics of Tychistic Bohmian Mechanics.Patrick Duerr & Alexander Ehmann - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90:168-183.
    The paper takes up Bell's “Everett theory” and develops it further. The resulting theory is about the system of all particles in the universe, each located in ordinary, 3-dimensional space. This many-particle system as a whole performs random jumps through 3N-dimensional configuration space – hence “Tychistic Bohmian Mechanics”. The distribution of its spontaneous localisations in configuration space is given by the Born Rule probability measure for the universal wavefunction. Contra Bell, the theory is argued to satisfy the minimal desiderata (...)
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  17. The Open Systems View and the Everett Interpretation.Michael E. Cuffaro & Stephan Hartmann - 2023 - Quantum Reports 5 (2):418-425.
    It is argued that those who defend the Everett, or ‘many-worlds’, interpretation of quantum mechanics should embrace what we call the general quantum theory of open systems (GT) as the proper framework in which to conduct foundational and philosophical investigations in quantum physics. GT is a wider dynamical framework than its alternative, standard quantum theory (ST). This is true even though GT makes no modifications to the quantum formalism. GT rather takes a different view, (...)
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  18. Quantum Mechanics, Fields, Black Holes, and Ontological Plurality.Gustavo E. Romero - 2024 - Philosophies 9 (4):97-121.
    The ontology behind quantum mechanics has been the subject of endless debate since the theory was formulated some 100 years ago. It has been suggested, at one time or another, that the objects described by the theory may be individual particles, waves, fields, ensembles of particles, observers, and minds, among many other possibilities. I maintain that these disagreements are due in part to a lack of precision in the use of the theory’s various semantic designators. In particular, there (...)
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  19. If Quantum Mechanics Is the Solution, What Should the Problem Be?Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Philosophy of Science eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 13 (32):1-10.
    The paper addresses the problem, which quantum mechanics resolves in fact. Its viewpoint suggests that the crucial link of time and its course is omitted in understanding the problem. The common interpretation underlain by the history of quantum mechanics sees discreteness only on the Plank scale, which is transformed into continuity and even smoothness on the macroscopic scale. That approach is fraught with a series of seeming paradoxes. It suggests that the present mathematical formalism of (...) mechanics is only partly relevant to its problem, which is ostensibly known. The paper accepts just the opposite: The mathematical solution is absolute relevant and serves as an axiomatic base, from which the real and yet hidden problem is deduced. Wave-particle duality, Hilbert space, both probabilistic and many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics, quantum information, and the Schrödinger equation are included in that base. The Schrödinger equation is understood as a generalization of the law of energy conservation to past, present, and future moments of time. The deduced real problem of quantum mechanics is: “What is the universal law describing the course of time in any physical change therefore including any mechanical motion?”. (shrink)
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  20. Quantum Mechanics and 3 N - Dimensional Space.Bradley Monton - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):778-789.
    I maintain that quantum mechanics is fundamentally about a system of N particles evolving in three-dimensional space, not the wave function evolving in 3N-dimensional space.
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  21.  65
    Exploring Quantum Mechanics through Advaita Vedānta and Śūnyavāda: A Clarification on the Interaction between Two Seemingly Unrelated Fields – Physical Science and Philosophy.R. L. Tripathi - 2024 - Physical Sciences and Biophysics Journal 8 (2):3.
    This paper aims to reveal the point of contact between modern science and ancient Indian philosophy, namely quantum mechanics and Advaita Vedanta and Sunyavada in particular. Modern quantum research discloses the essential characteristics of quantum mechanics that disprove classical determinism and find out the relations between energy, entropy, and observations, wave-particle duality, and entanglement. These ideas have some similarity with Advaita Vedanta’s non-dualism (Maya) and Buddhism’s relational existence (Sunyavada) yet there lacks investigation of how either (...)
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  22. Quantum Mechanics in a Time-Asymmetric Universe: On the Nature of the Initial Quantum State.Eddy Keming Chen - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (4):1155–1183.
    In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, we postulate a low-entropy boundary condition to account for the temporal asymmetry. In this paper, I show that the Past Hypothesis also contains enough information to simplify the quantum ontology and define a unique initial condition in such a world. First, I introduce Density Matrix Realism, the thesis that the quantum universe is described by a fundamental density matrix that represents something objective. This stands in sharp contrast (...)
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  23. How Quantum Mechanics Can Consistently Describe the Use of Itself.Dustin Lazarovici & Mario Hubert - 2019 - Scientific Reports 470 (9):1-8.
    We discuss the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner based on an "extended Wigner's friend" thought experiment which is supposed to show that any single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics leads to inconsistent predictions if it is applicable on all scales. We show that no such inconsistency occurs if one considers a complete description of the physical situation. We then discuss implications of the thought experiment that have not been clearly addressed in the original paper, including a tension between (...)
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  24. Interpreting Quantum Mechanics and Predictability in Terms of Facts About the Universe.Andrew Knight - manuscript
    A potentially new interpretation of quantum mechanics posits the state of the universe as a consistent set of facts that are instantiated in the correlations among entangled objects. A fact (or event) occurs exactly when the number or density of future possibilities decreases, and a quantum superposition exists if and only if the facts of the universe are consistent with the superposition. The interpretation sheds light on both in-principle and real-world predictability of the universe.
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  25. Quantum mechanics unscrambled.Jean-Michel Delhotel - 2014
    Is quantum mechanics about ‘states’? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to ‘classical’ instantiations of a probability calculus. Its providing a general framework for prediction accounts for its distinctive traits, which one should be careful not to mistake for reflections of any strange ontology. The suggestion is also made that quantum theory unwittingly emerged, in Schrödinger’s formulation, as (...)
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  26. Quantum Mechanics and Paradigm Shifts.Valia Allori - 2015 - Topoi 34 (2):313-323.
    It has been argued that the transition from classical to quantum mechanics is an example of a Kuhnian scientific revolution, in which there is a shift from the simple, intuitive, straightforward classical paradigm, to the quantum, convoluted, counterintuitive, amazing new quantum paradigm. In this paper, after having clarified what these quantum paradigms are supposed to be, I analyze whether they constitute a radical departure from the classical paradigm. Contrary to what is commonly maintained, I argue (...)
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  27. Heisenberg quantum mechanics, numeral set-theory and.Han Geurdes - manuscript
    In the paper we will employ set theory to study the formal aspects of quantum mechanics without explicitly making use of space-time. It is demonstrated that von Neuman and Zermelo numeral sets, previously efectively used in the explanation of Hardy’s paradox, follow a Heisenberg quantum form. Here monadic union plays the role of time derivative. The logical counterpart of monadic union plays the part of the Hamiltonian in the commutator. The use of numerals and monadic union in (...)
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  28. Quantum Mechanical EPRBA covariance and classical probability.Han Geurdes - manuscript
    Contrary to Bell’s theorem it is demonstrated that with the use of classical probability theory the quantum correlation can be approximated. Hence, one may not conclude from experiment that all local hidden variable theories are ruled out by a violation of inequality result.
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  29. Quantum Mechanics.Michael Silberstein - forthcoming - In Editors Seibt and Burkhard (ed.), Philosophia Verlag Handbook of Mereology.
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  30. Quantum Mechanics, Metaphysics, and Bohm's Implicate Order.George Williams - 2019 - Mind and Matter 2 (17):155-186.
    The persistent interpretation problem for quantum mechanics may indicate an unwillingness to consider unpalatable assumptions that could open the way toward progress. With this in mind, I focus on the work of David Bohm, whose earlier work has been more influential than that of his later. As I’ll discuss, I believe two assumptions play a strong role in explaining the disparity: 1) that theories in physics must be grounded in mathematical structure and 2) that consciousness must supervene on (...)
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  31. Is quantum mechanics real or complex?Shu-Di Yang - manuscript
    It has been long debated whether quantum mechanics is real or complex. Local experiments have been carried out confirming the complex nature of quantum mechanics in the standard formalism. Nevertheless, recent theoretical work demonstrated that in a closed universe, quantum mechanics is real. We discuss the philosophical implications of whether quantum mechanics is real or complex.
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  32. Quantum Mechanics: Observer and von Neumann Chain.Michele Caponigro - manuscript
    In this brief paper, we argue about the conceptual relationship between the role of observer in quantum mechanics and the von Neumann Chain. -/- .
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  33. Quantum mechanics in terms of realism.Arthur Jabs - 2017 - arXiv.Org.
    We expound an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of the formalism of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The basic difference is that the new interpretation is formulated in the language of epistemological realism. It involves a change in some basic physical concepts. The ψ function is no longer interpreted as a probability amplitude of the observed behaviour of elementary particles but as an objective physical field representing the particles themselves. The particles are thus extended objects whose extension varies in time (...)
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  34.  67
    Gedankenexperiments reconciling quantum mechanics, relativity, and our experience of time.Paul Merriam & M. A. Z. Habeeb - manuscript
    In this short informal note we consider four Gedankenexperiments that show A-theories of time are compelling and can be leveraged to give a Presentist Fragmentalist realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Each of these four involve roles for manifest time, relativistic time, and quantum mechanical time. The point is to give simple everyday situations where a new point of view leads to the consistency of all three. This is the MO of the early Einstein. Einstein's Train is one (...)
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  35. Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.Michael Epperson - 2004 - New York: Fordham University Press.
    In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. -/- This ambitious book is the first extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Whitehead's cosmology. Michael Epperson illuminates the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work-and details Whitehead's attempts to fashion an ontology coherent with quantum anomalies. -/- Including a nonspecialist (...)
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  36. The case of quantum mechanics mathematizing reality: the “superposition” of mathematically modelled and mathematical reality: Is there any room for gravity?Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 2 (24):1-15.
    A case study of quantum mechanics is investigated in the framework of the philosophical opposition “mathematical model – reality”. All classical science obeys the postulate about the fundamental difference of model and reality, and thus distinguishing epistemology from ontology fundamentally. The theorems about the absence of hidden variables in quantum mechanics imply for it to be “complete” (versus Einstein’s opinion). That consistent completeness (unlike arithmetic to set theory in the foundations of mathematics in Gödel’s opinion) can (...)
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  37. Quantum mechanical measurement in monistic systems theory.Klaus Fröhlich - 2023 - Science and Philosophy 11 (2):76-83.
    The monistic worldview aims at a uniform description of nature based on scientific models. Quantum physical systems are mutually part of the other quantum physical systems. An aperture distributes the subsystems and the wave front in all possible ways. The system only takes one of the possible paths, as measurements show. Conclusion from Bell's theorem: Before the quantum physical measurement, there is no point-like location in the universe where all the information that explains the measurement is available. (...)
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  38. If time travel to our location is possible, we do not live in a branching universe.James Norton - 2018 - Analysis 78 (2):260-266.
    This paper argues for the following disjunction: either we do not live in a world with a branching temporal structure, or backwards time travel is nomologically impossible, given the initial state of the universe, or backwards time travel to our space-time location is impossible given large-scale facts about space and time. A fortiori, if backwards time travel to our location is possible, we do not live in a branching universe.
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  39. A quantum mechanical analysis of time and motion in relativity theory.Diederik Aerts & Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi - 2024 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 39 (2):165-191.
    An operational approach to quantum mechanics has been developed in the past decades in our group in Brussels. A similar approach is taken in this work, making use of the extra operational depth offered by this approach, to show that the construction of spacetime is specific to each observer. What is usually referred to as the block universe then emerges by noting that parts of the past and future are also contained in the present, but without the limitations (...)
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  40. Quantum mechanics as a deterministic theory of a continuum of worlds.Kim Joris Boström - 2015 - Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations 2 (3):315-347.
    A non-relativistic quantum mechanical theory is proposed that describes the universe as a continuum of worlds whose mutual interference gives rise to quantum phenomena. A logical framework is introduced to properly deal with propositions about objects in a multiplicity of worlds. In this logical framework, the continuum of worlds is treated in analogy to the continuum of time points; both “time” and “world” are considered as mutually independent modes of existence. The theory combines elements of Bohmian mechanics (...)
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  41. An Intrinsic Theory of Quantum Mechanics: Progress in Field's Nominalistic Program, Part I.Eddy Keming Chen - manuscript
    In this paper, I introduce an intrinsic account of the quantum state. This account contains three desirable features that the standard platonistic account lacks: (1) it does not refer to any abstract mathematical objects such as complex numbers, (2) it is independent of the usual arbitrary conventions in the wave function representation, and (3) it explains why the quantum state has its amplitude and phase degrees of freedom. -/- Consequently, this account extends Hartry Field’s program outlined in Science (...)
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  42. The principles of quantum mechanics.Paul Dirac - 1930 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.
    THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION. The need for a quantum theory Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ...
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  43. Axiomatic foundations of Quantum Mechanics revisited: the case for systems.S. E. Perez-Bergliaffa, Gustavo E. Romero & H. Vucetich - 1996 - International Journal of Theoretical Phyisics 35:1805-1819.
    We present an axiomatization of non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics for a system with an arbitrary number of components. The interpretation of our system of axioms is realistic and objective. The EPR paradox and its relation with realism is discussed in this framework. It is shown that there is no contradiction between realism and recent experimental results.
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  44. Quantum Mechanical Reality: Entanglement and Decoherence.Avijit Lahiri - manuscript
    We look into the ontology of quantum theory as distinct from that of the classical theory in the sciences. Theories carry with them their own ontology while the metaphysics may remain the same in the background. We follow a broadly Kantian tradition, distinguishing between the noumenal and phenomenal realities where the former is independent of our perception while the latter is assembled from the former by means of fragmentary bits of interpretation. Theories do not tell us how the noumenal (...)
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  45.  72
    Lunch-to-Dinner in Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.Paul Merriam & M. A. Z. Habeeb - manuscript
    Dinner tonight may be 6 hours later than lunch today. Also, lunch and dinner go from being in our future to being in our present (consecutively) and then our past (consecutively). How do quantum mechanics and relativity account for this?
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  46. Individuation and Identity in quantum mechanics.Debajyoti Gangopadhyay - 2022 - In Nalanda Dialogue Series , Volume 2. Nalanda , India: Navanalanda Mahavihara. pp. 151-165.
    Developments of quantum mechanics during the first three decades of the last century led most fundamentally to different orders of difficulties in the spatio-temporal modes of description. And, as a consequence, ambiguities in the meaning of quantum mechanical are in sight for the first time. So the question (from logico-philosophical grounds) we were left as back as late 20s of the last century – a question methodologically prior to all other questions - How to talk about (...) particles [in a Language] which are not instantiation of spatio-temporal is or ONE of their particular kind? Though not popular among the physicists, philosophers often use the phrase failure of principles of Individuation or ontological priorities of individual to describe this situation. -/- Within the intended scope of this volume, we need not give the technical details of this failure here. We are basically narrating here a non-technical story outline of the way quantum mechanical language messes with standard logic and set theory embedded with the concept of unambiguous is, and the possible consequences. (shrink)
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  47. What Quantum Mechanics Doesn't Show.Justin P. McBrayer & Dugald Owen - 2016 - Teaching Philosophy 39 (2):163-176.
    Students often invoke quantum mechanics in class or papers to make philosophical points. This tendency has been encouraged by pop culture influences like the film What the Bleep do We Know? There is little merit to most of these putative implications. However, it is difficult for philosophy teachers unfamiliar with quantum mechanics to handle these supposed implications in a clear and careful way. This paper is a philosophy of science version of MythBusters. We offer a brief (...)
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  48. Barad, Bohr, and quantum mechanics.Jan Faye & Rasmus Jaksland - 2021 - Synthese 199:8231-8255.
    The last decade has seen an increasing number of references to quantum mechanics in the humanities and social sciences. This development has in particular been driven by Karen Barad’s agential realism: a theoretical framework that, based on Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, aims to inform social theorizing. In dealing with notions such as agency, power, and embodiment as well as the relation between the material and the discursive level, the influence of agential realism in fields (...)
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  49. Quantum Mechanics and Relational Realism: Logical Causality and Wave Function Collapse.Michael Epperson - 2009 - Process Studies 38 (2):340-367.
    By the relational realist interpretation of wave function collapse, the quantum mechanical actualization of potentia is defined as a decoherence-driven process by which each actualization (in “orthodox” terms, each measurement outcome) is conditioned both by physical and logical relations with the actualities conventionally demarked as “environmental” or external to that particular outcome. But by the relational realist interpretation, the actualization-in-process is understood as internally related to these “enironmental” data per the formalism of quantum decoherence. The concept of “actualization (...)
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  50. Philosophical & Practical Implications of Quantum Mechanics.Sunil Thakur - manuscript
    Quantum mechanics makes some very significant observations about nature. Unfortunately, these observations remain a mystery because they do not fit into and/or cannot be explained through classical mechanics. However, we can still explore the philosophical and practical implications of these observations. This article aims to explain philosophical and practical implications of one of the most important observations of quantum mechanics – uncertainty or the arbitrariness in the behavior of particles.
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