The Bare Theory Has No Clothes Jeffrey Bub, Rob Clifton, and Bradley Monton MINNESOTA STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE VOLUME XVII Quantum Measurement: Beyond Paradox RICHARD A. HEALEY AND GEOFFREY HELLMAN, EDITORS Terms and Conditions: You may use the content only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.upress.umn.edu/html/contact.html University of Minnesota Press Suite 290 111 Third Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55401 Phone: 612-627-1970 Fax: 612-627-1980 Email: ump@umn.edu To purchase the complete volume visit: http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/K/kellert_scientific.html http://www.mcps.umn.edu

MINNESOTA STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE This page intentionally left blank Minnesota Studies in the PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE C. KENNETH WATERS, GENERAL EDITOR HERBERT FEIGL, FOUNDING EDITOR VOLUME XVII Quantum Measurement: Beyond Paradox EDITED BY RICHARD A. HEALEY AND GEOFFREY HELLMAN University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Copyright 1998 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Sections of "Varieties of Quantum Measurement," by William G. Unruh, were originally published in New Techniques and Ideas in Quantum Measurement Theory, edited by Daniel Greenberger, New York Academy of Science, 1986; reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Quantum measurement: beyond paradox / edited by Richard A. Healey and Geoffrey Hellman. p. cm. - (Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science : v. 17) Includes index. ISBN 0-8166-3065-8 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Quantum theory-Congresses. 2. Physical measurements- Congresses. I. Healey, Richard. II. Hellman, Geoffrey. III. Series. QC173.96.Q363 1998 530.12-dc21 98-17341 The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface vii Macroscopic Realism: What Is It, and What Do We Know about It from Experiment? 1 Anthony J. Leggett Comments on Leggett's "Macroscopic Realism" 23 Abner Shimony The Bare Theory Has No Clothes 32 Jeffrey Bub, Rob Clifton, and Bradley Monton "Modal" Interpretations, Decoherence, and the Quantum Measurement Problem 52 Richard A. Healey Interpreting the Existential Interpretation 87 Andrew Elby State Preparation in the Modal Interpretation 95 Guido Bacciagaluppi and Meir Hemmo Expanding the Property Ascriptions in the Modal Interpretation of Quantum Theory 115 Pieter E. Vermaas Preferred Factorizations and Consistent Property Attribution 144 Dennis Dieks On the Plurality of Dynamics: Transition Probabilities and Modal Interpretations 160 Michael Dickson Varieties of Quantum Measurement 183 William G. Unruh Contributors 199 Index 203 Jeffrey Bub, Rob Clifton, and Bradley Monton The Bare Theory Has No Clothes I . What Makes the Bare Theory So Seductive? Consider quantum theory without the collapse postulate. No experiment has ever disconfirmed its statistical predictions. So one might reasonably bet that no experiment ever will. If not, every possible state of anything in the universe, from the spin states of electrons to the states of consciousness of sentient beings, must evolve in time according to Schrodinger's equation. A theoretician's paradise . .. except for that nagging problem of how to make sense of what the theory says will happen when we try to confirm its statistical predictions. The problem is worth rehearsing. Suppose m is a device that reliably records whether an electron e's spin is up or down along some specified direction (for simplicity: without disturbing that spin). The unitary evolution characterizing the m + e interaction will therefore map: where '?'}m is the ready-to-measure state of m, and | 'up'}m and |'down')m are two orthogonal recording states of m that distinguish whether e's spin is up or down in the direction of measurement. (The quotation marks signify that, for present purposes, we can remain agnostic about precisely what physical quantity of m these three states are eigenstates of.) If m is set up to do its job when e is in some arbitrary superposition of up and down spin states: Ci \up) e + c2 \down)e, (2) the above evolutions and the linearity of the Schrodinger equation entail that the final state ofm + e will be: C j \up) e \'up')m + c2 \down)e 'down')m. (3) 32 THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 33 Quantum theory dictates that, on looking to see what recording property m has, there is a chance of cl | 2 that an experimenter, let's call her Eve, will see 'up,' and a chance of | c21 2 that she will see 'down.' Now if the Schrodinger equation is universally valid and Eve is a competent observer, we should be able to model the acquisition of her belief about the spin state of e (which she acquires through her belief about m's recording property) by a unitary mapping of the same general form as (1). Then Eve's looking at m will generate the state: where the two states of Eve in this superposition' are vectors lying in distinct eigenspaces of whatever physical quantity of Eve's brain it is that records information gathered through her senses (again, the quotation marks allow us to remain agnostic about what physical quantity that is). At this point, for the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics to have something to refer to, it seems that one must say that, although (4) is the full quantum state of e + m + Eve, in any particular case when Eve looks at m, just one of (4)'s terms represents what Eve will actually come to believe about e's spin. Indeed, statistical predictions aside, something like this must be said if we are to reconcile the theory with the fact that experimenters like Eve always take themselves to have definite beliefs about what their measurement devices indicate. But the trouble is that the standard way of thinking about superpositions in quantum mechanics prohibits attributing a definite value to any observable of a system whose eigenstates are superposed by the system's quantum state, as Eve's belief states are in (4). To say anything more than that by way of underwriting the definiteness of Eve's e-spin belief with hidden variables, worlds, minds, or what-not is standardly taken to be adding to the theory, and that's standardly taken to be a bad thing to do. So it appears that standard thinkers-at least those who want to uphold the universal validity of the Schrodinger equation without introducing the collapse postulate-have backed themselves into a corner on the issue of whether experimenters like Eve have definite beliefs about their measurement outcomes (not to mention the statistics of those outcomes). But maybe not. David Albert (1992, 116-19) has suggested that if the issue is simply whether it is possible to recover our everyday sense that experimenters hold definite beliefs about the things with which they interact, then that can be done with standard thinking using what Albert calls the Bare theory. The Bare theory promises to be just what its name suggests: a theory on which the Schrodinger equation is universally valid, the standard way 34 Bub, Clifton, and Monton of thinking about superpositions is correct, and that is all there is to say. So there are no collapses, variables, worlds, or minds postulated to save the definiteness of Eve's belief in (4).2 The Bare theory's explanation of why, despite all that, everyone (Eve included) will always come to believe that her belief about e's spin is definite, is described by Albert as "amazingly cool."3 The explanation goes like this (with minor embellishment). Suppose Eve's partner Adam is determined to figure out whether Eve has a definite belief about e's spin while in state (4). Adam cannot just ask Eve what belief about e-spin she has while in state (4), because the linearity of the Schrodinger equation will put her into a superposition of responding to Adam in two different ways, and according to Albert (1992,117), "it won't be any easier to interpret a 'response' like that than it was to interpret the superposition of brain states in [(4)] that that response was intended to be a description of!" Without automatically inducing a superposition of responses, however, Adam can simply ask Eve: "Don't tell me whether you believe the electron to be [up] or you believe it to be [down], but tell me merely whether or not one of those two is the case; tell me (in other words) merely whether or not you have any particular definite belief (not uncertain and not confused and not vague and not superposed) about the value of the [spin] of this electron" (1992, 118). The way to model Eve answering that question within quantum mechanics is, presumably, as follows. If Eve is an honest and competent reporter of her mental states, then when asked whether she has a definite e-spin belief in a state like 'Believes e-spin up')Eve, she should report Yes. For in that case, the Bare theory predicts that Eve's belief will be definite, and we can assume that there is nothing else stopping her from honestly and competently reporting that fact. But then the same goes for how Eve will respond if she were asked the same question by Adam while in the state | 'Believes e-spin down')Bve; namely, she will again respond with a Yes.4 It follows that the correct way to model Eve's response to Adam's question about the definiteness of her e-spin belief is in terms of a unitary evolution that maps: | 'Believes e-spin wp')Eve 'Ready to Answer')Eve -> | 'Believes e-spin up')Eve \ 'Yes, I have a definite e-spin belief')Eve, 'Believes e-spin Jown')Eve | 'Ready to Answer')Eve (5) -> 'Believes e-spin down')Eve 'Yes, I have a definite e-spin belief')Eve, where the two states of Eve we have introduced denote the physical correlates in her brain of her getting ready to answer, and responding Yes to the question.5 THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 35 But now the cool thing is that if (5) models Eve's response to Adam, the linearity of the Schrodinger equation demands that when she responds to his question in superposition (4), the final state of e + m + Eve will necessarily be: which is not a superposition of Eve giving different answers, but an eigenstate of Eve responding Yes! And so the Bare theory predicts that Yes will definitely be Eve's answer, even when in fact she has no definite state of belief about e-spin according to that theory (that is, according to standard thinking about what it means to be in an uncollapsed superposition of belief states). Eve is "apparently going to be radically deceived even about what her own occurrent mental state is" (1992, 118). Albert calls a situation like this a situation in which Eve "effectively knows" what e's spin is (1992, 120). So the cool thing is that we can use the sparse resources of the Bare theory to show why no two people are ever going to believe anything out of the ordinary about the definiteness of each other's beliefs. Indeed, since it could just as well have been Eve herself who introspects about her own beliefs and inquires as to whether they are definite about e-spin, the Bare theory predicts that experimenters will never believe anything out of the ordinary about their own beliefs either. It is rather like the situation before the fall: Both Adam and Eve were naked, but to keep the paradise, God ensured that they knew not that they were naked. In this case, the Schrodinger equation is what keeps the paradise: That is: maybe (even if the standard way of thinking about what it means to be in a superposition is the right way of thinking about what it means to be in a superposition) the linear dynamical laws are nonetheless the complete laws of the evolution of the entire world, and maybe all the appearances to the contrary (like the appearance that experiments have outcomes, and the appearance that the world doesn't evolve deterministically) turn out to be just the sorts of delusions which those laws themselves can be shown to bring on\ (1992, 123) Of course, paradise in the garden of Eden did not last long. And trouble is lurking in the Bare theoretician's paradise too. In fact, this story has at least two problems. We shall draw out the first problem in the next section, and identify the second, the decisive problem, in the section after that. Albert gives further Bare theory stories to explain why experimenters take immediately repeated measurements to yield the same determinate result, why different experimenters measuring the same observable take c1 |up]nup']|,Belives-spin up']eve|'Yes, I have a dfinte e-spain belief']eve+ (6) c2 |down],|down']n|'Belives e-spain down']eve|Yes I have a definite e-spain belief]eve 36 Bub, Clifton, andMonton themselves to agree on the outcome, and why experimenters take the measurement result statistics they gather in their laboratories to confirm the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics (1992, 119-23). We believe that those stories have exactly the same problems, and shall indicate why toward the end of this chapter.6 2. The Bare Necessities The first thing to sort out is how much of this story about Eve always taking her beliefs to be definite and responding accordingly is a necessary consequence of the Bare theory. Albert homes in on the correct way to model Eve's response to Adam's question by saying that she, being honest and competent enough to assess her own mental state, would answer Yes if she were, according to the Bare theory, in any quantum state that corresponds to her having a definite e-spin belief. Albert then employs that model, defined by equations (5), in a state where the Bare theory blocks Eve from having a definite belief. Finally, he concludes on the basis of the linearity of the Schrodinger equation that, nevertheless, she would still respond Yes. But then it would seem she cannot have been honest and competent after all! Perhaps the correct conclusion is that Albert has stacked the deck in his own favor by not modeling Eve so that she can respond as competently and reliably as possible, whatever her circumstances. But that conclusion is too quick. It fails to recognize that the Bare theory itself sets definite limits on modeling Eve's response. We summari/e these limits in a modest theorem. Bare Theorem The following are mutually inconsistent: 1. There is a unitary interaction that models Eve answering Adam's question about the definiteness of her e-spin belief. 2. Eve's answers are always given honestly and competently on the basis of what her beliefs are-or are not-as determined by the Bare theory's standard thinking about superpositions. So she will answer Yes if in an eigenstate of definite e-spin belief, and No if not. 3. The model must allow Adam (or Eve, if she is just introspecting about the structure of her own beliefs) to distinguish situations in which Eve chooses to respond (or conclude) Yes from situations in which she chooses to respond (or conclude) No. THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 37 The inconsistency follows easily. Let | 'Huh?')Eve be any nontrivial superposition of 'Believes e-spin M/>')Eve and 'Believes e-spin down')Eve. Assumptions 2 and 3 entail that the unitary evolution that 1 assumes to exist must, in particular, map: 'Believes e-spin wp')Eve I 'Ready to Answer')Eve -> 'Believes e-spin up'}Eve 'Yes, I have a definite e-spin belief'}Eve, 'Huh?')Eve | 'Ready to Answer')Eve (7) -> | 'Huh?')Eve | 'No, I don't have a definite e-spin belief')Eve, which it cannot, since that would be to map initially nonorthogonal vectors onto orthogonal ones. (The contradiction continues to hold without the idealization that in responding Eve fails to disturb her own state of belief.) So from the point of view of the Bare theory, if we understand the theory as requiring 1, 2, and 3 above for a "good" measurement of the definiteness of Eve's e-spin belief, there is no good way to model Eve's response quantum-mechanically. Nevertheless, since quantum mechanics is everything on the Bare theory, and we think we do ascertain the definiteness of each other's (and, indeed, our own) beliefs via interactions of some sort, those interactions must be capable of being modeled by some kind of unitary evolution. So 1 is not open to question. And 3 cannot be given up without undermining the possibility of Eve ascertaining and reporting on what the structure of her e-spin beliefs is, which is presumably something we do think she can do. So 2 needs to be loosened up in some way. But in what way? Albert takes it that the way to model Eve's response unitarily is via an interaction of type (5). He appeals to the competency Eve would have to report her mental state when it is an eigenstate of some definite belief about e-spin. He then rigs the unitary interaction of (5) so that it correlates the answer Yes to those eigenstates,7 concluding (by linearity) that Eve must be completely incompetent in reporting her mental state when in a superposition of them. However, the following parallel line of argument is equally compelling, and equally natural in the context of the Bare theory. Suppose, instead, that Eve is competent to report her mental state when it is not an eigenstate of some definite belief about e-spin. (After all, why assume a priori that she would somehow be speechless about her lack of definite belief?) Let 'Huh?' }Eve and | 'Wha?' )Eve, not eigenstates of definite belief about e-spin, span the same plane in the Hilbert space that represents Eve's brain states as the eigenstates 'Believes e-spin «/?'}Eve and | 'Believes e-spin down')Evs. do. Then in each of those noneigenstates of e-spin belief, Eve should respond No to the question, "Do you have a definite e-spin belief?" By 38 Bub, Clifton, and Monton linearity, she will also respond No for any brain state in the plane. And that includes the very states in which the Bare theory guarantees that she will have a definite belief, namely, | 'Believes e-spin up')Eve and | 'Believes e-spin down')Eve! For example, if then If Eve (competently) responds No to the question about the definiteness of her e-spin belief in the states | 'Huh?')Eve and | 'Wha?')Eve, by linearity she will (incompetently) respond No to the question in the states | 'Believes espin M/?')Eve, | 'Believes e-spin down')Eve. So two completely parallel arguments for how to model Eve's response yield utterly incompatible results and incompatible stories about the way in which Eve is deluded. The Bare theory per se does not tell us which is the correct model, because it contains no principle that stipulates in what ways experimenters should be competent to report their beliefs, and in what ways they should not. In other words, the Bare theory contains no prescription that says that when Eve reflects about her own beliefs, Eve's brain is hard-wired so that Albert's unitary evolution (5) gets turned on inside her brain, as opposed to the unitary evolution just described. The Bare theorist cannot treat evolution (5) as a kind of calibration condition that defines what we mean by Eve's response acting as a good measurement of the structure of her own beliefs. For the evolution which induces her to respond No in both the | 'Huh?')Eve and | 'Wha?')Eve states is based on an equally good calibration condition, given that under the Bare theory the No response would be the correct one for those states. However, this is still not enough to reject the Bare theorist's story out of hand, for there is an easy way Albert can grant the point just made. No interpretation of quantum mechanics should ever be called upon to decide a priori how to model a given interaction. So, in this case, we are free to find a model that fits the data that we never find people reporting that they fail to have definite beliefs about things when they are in eigenstates of definite belief-assuming that is an empirically established (or, at any rate, estabTHE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 39 lishable) fact. Then, the ability of the Bare theory to at least represent (if not strictly deduce) the fact that experimenters never take their beliefs to be indefinite is perhaps all that should be required. But before this aspect of the Bare theory is shouted from the rooftops, we would do well to put it into perspective. Compare what remains of the Bare theory's explanatory strategy to the strategy adopted by nonstandard interpretations of no-collapse quantum mechanics that inject variables, worlds, or minds into the discussion to make definite Eve's beliefs in a superposition such as (4). The chief reason why standard thinkers about superpositions dislike the nonstandard strategy is that it requires certain observables-such as the observable whose eigenstates underpin Eve's beliefs-always to have well-defined values, even when the observable's eigenstates are superposed by the quantum state of the system. Standard thinkers do not accept that sort of discrimination between physical observables: as far as the formalism of quantum mechanics is concerned, all of its observables are on a par. To single out whatever observable it is that grounds our beliefs as an observable that it always makes sense to ascribe a definite value to regardless of quantum state is regarded as irredeemably ad hoc. There is just nothing special about that observable as compared to any other; nothing "preferred" about the set of belief eigenspaces in the Hilbert space representing Eve's brain over any other observable's eigenspaces in that space. (And, of course, if we assume all observables have simultaneously definite values all the time, that all sets of eigenspaces are on a par with respect to determinacy, then we run into well-known difficulties with what we mean by saying that every observable has a determinate value [see note 10].) In that regard, however, the Bare theory's strategy for dealing with the problem of what experimenters take themselves to believe on the basis of their measurement devices is now no less objectionable than the nonstandard approach. The nonstandard preferred-observable approach would say that it just so happens in our world that "belief" is the kind of physical observable for which it always makes sense to speak about having one belief or another (where that may, in purely physical terms, amount to saying that the particles in experimenters' brains take up one configuration over another, if what we call beliefs turn out to be nothing other than certain positions being taken up by certain brain particles). The Bare theorist has to say that it just so happens in our world that the brain is hard-wired to give us the kind of beliefs we take ourselves to have about our beliefs. In fact, the analogy between the two explanatory strategies is far closer than that. The difference between the unitary evolution that would make Eve respond Yes and the one that would make her respond No is just a difference in choice of basis: either we decide that she is in fact competent to 40 Bub, Clifton, andMonton report the definiteness of her belief in both of two orthogonal belief eigenstates, or we decide that she is in fact competent to report her lack of definite belief in both of two orthogonal woneigenstates of belief that span the same plane. The comparable choice on a preferred-observable approach is between Eve's belief observable as determinate versus, say, the observable with |'Huh?')Eve and |'Wha?')Eve as eigenstates. The formal structure in quantum mechanics that needs to be distinguished by the Bare theory to get a fix on modeling observers' reports is exactly the same structure preferred-observable approaches exploit, namely a preferred basis in the subspace spanned by 'Believes e-spin up')Eve and | 'Believes e-spin <&wn')Eve picked out by those two vectors. So despite its name, the Bare theory cannot get by with less than nonstandard preferred-observable approaches do in explaining why experimenters report themselves to have definite beliefs. It cannot be claimed that the Bare theory's choice is determined by empirical facts any more than that can be claimed for the preferred-observable approaches. The fact that experimenters respond Yes in belief eigenstates, and also respond like that in any state that is a linear superposition of those eigenstates, is exactly the sort of empirical fact preferred-observable approaches can point to in justifying their own particular preference, namely, for the belief observable as the one that's determinate. 3. The Bare Theory Exposed So far we have argued that if the Bare theory's story about how experimenters come to believe/report that their beliefs are definite is granted, then it is no better off than preferred-observable approaches with respect to the structure in the quantum formalism that needs to be distinguished. We now turn to arguing that the Bare theory is actually worse off because it does not succeed in explaining all that needs to be explained. The final section of the chapter will point out how the preferred-observable approach succeeds exactly where the Bare theory falls short. The upshot will be that this entire exercise concerning the Bare theory supplies a nice (even if somewhat scholastic) argument for a preferred-observable approach to universal no-collapse quantum mechanics. It will be important, first, to be absolutely clear about what the standard thinking about quantum states is, since our contention will be that Albert does not follow that thinking to its logical conclusion. There is no difficulty in capturing what standard thinking is about eigenstates. If a physical system is in an eigenstate of an observable, then that observable possesses the corresponding eigenvalue (or at least the system THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 41 has the surefire disposition to behave as if that value were a property it possesses). In superpositions of two (or more) distinct-eigenvalue eigenstates of an observable, things are more delicate. Suppose the eigenstates' eigenvalues are x and y. Then standard thinking entails that it would not be right to say in the superposition that the observable has value x, nor would it be right to say it has value y, nor would it be right to say it has both values, nor would it be right to say it has neither value. This is Albert's own understanding of standard thinking about superpositions (1992, ll,79n). However mind-boggling these assertions might appear, they are the rules of the game that need to be followed if the Bare theory is to be entertained. Now in our thought experiment about Eve, Albert makes a conceptual distinction between her brain as a repository of beliefs about e-spin, and the aspects of her that reflect on her beliefs about e-spin and then report on her reflections if she is asked questions about her beliefs. The fact that she verbalizes her beliefs about her e-spin beliefs is unimportant, although at one point Albert suggests it might be important: "[Eve] is necessarily going to be convinced (or at any rate she is necessarily going to report) that she does have a definite particular belief" (1992, 118). It cannot possibly be important, because if she does not think herself to have a definite e-spin belief, then that is presumably going to be a problem for the Bare theory regardless of what she reports. Furthermore, the very act of her reporting that she has a definite e-spin belief should presumably induce her to give assent to the content of her report, if the way we are modeling Eve as a quantum-mechanical automaton is going to have any relation to our own experience that we (in normal circumstances) don't bear witness to things we aren't prepared to accept ourselves. So we can view the eigenstates of Eve's reporting Yes that we introduced earlier as eigenstates of her reflecting Yes (but not necessarily verbalizing the answer) without compromising the Bare theory in any way. Then what Albert needs is a conceptual distinction between Eve's brain as a retainer of beliefs about things such as e-spin and Eve's brain as it functions in reflecting about the structure of those beliefs. For easy reference, call these two faces of Eve the "inner" and "outer" Eve respectively.8 And let's grant to Albert that they will interact in exactly the way he postulates, that is, in accord with equations (5). For Albert to make his point that the Bare theory predicts that Eve will be deluded about the definiteness of her e-spin beliefs, he needs to establish that the outer Eve draws a conclusion at variance with the Bare facts of the matter about the inner Eve. And for both inner and outer Eve, Albert must employ standard thinking to determine the Bare facts of the matter about Eve's inner beliefs, and about her outer beliefs about her inner beliefs. 42 Bub, Clifton, and Monton The inner facts of the matter in the belief superposition are, in particular, that Eve doesn't believe up and she doesn't believe down. These are quite specific negative claims about her situation. What we are leading up to is that Albert unjustifiably pulls back from drawing a similar kind of negative conclusion when outer Eve has the potential of getting into the same kind of superposition. When outer Eve reflects upon whether she has exactly one of the two beliefs in the set {Believes e-spin up, Believes e-spin down}, she always concludes Yes (on the assumption that a particular unitary interaction, namely (5), is singled out as modeling this act of reflection). So if the Bare theory is true, Albert is right to observe that Eve is deluded when answering Yes in the superposition. But if the Bare theory is true, we can also ask what it will predict when Eve attempts to reflect upon what belief about e-spin she has. Since she would then get into a superposition of believing that she believes up and believing that she believes down (assuming she is good at ascertaining her specific beliefs in the eigenstate cases), under the Bare theory she will be unable to specify which of the two beliefs she takes herself to hold. Recall what Albert says about that when Eve was being asked to report to Adam her reflections about what e-spin belief she has while in the superposition: "it won't be any easier to interpret a 'response' like that than it was to interpret the superposition of brain states in [(4)] that that response was intended to be a description of!" True enough. But the general difficulties of interpreting superpositions notwithstanding, the Bare theory has something quite specific to say about Eve getting into a superposition of believing that she believes up and believing that she believes down. The Bare theory says that outer Eve will not believe that she believes up and will not believe that she believes down, in just the same way that it says that inner Eve does not believe up and does not believe down. The point is that we don't merely take ourselves to have "definite beliefs" in everyday life. After performing spin measurements on electrons, we sometimes take ourselves to believe up and other times take ourselves to believe down, depending on how our experiments go. The Bare theory can only explain that when we perform measurements on electrons in spin eigenstates-not in superpositions. The issue that seems to have been lost sight of in all of this is that we also commonly believe that we have the grounds for believing that we have definite beliefs, in the sense that on any given occasion we are able to reflect on what our belief is! Let's put it another way. Earlier in his book (1992,78-79), Albert takes the problem of interpreting a universal quantum mechanics without the collapse postulate to be that the theory predicts we should have no particular THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 43 belief in a superposition when, by "direct introspection," we apparently do. His strategy for the Bare theory is to see if we can get it to explain why we take ourselves to have a definite belief in a superposition. But Albert has merely solved a watered-down version of the problem. The problem is not just to explain why we take our beliefs about things like e-spin to be definite in some noncommittal sense, but why we take ourselves to believe the specific things that we do apparently believe about e-spin! In trying to get the Bare theory to explain that, it will (as Albert himself admits) land outer Eve into the same sort of devastating superposition that inner Eve is in. But that fact is hardly irrelevant to the Bare theory's inability to explain what we take our specific beliefs to be. The Bare theory's story about apparently definite beliefs is so seductive (as each of the present authors knows from personal experience) that anticipating responses to this quite elementary criticism we have just made is obligatory. Note, first, that we are not accusing the Bare theory of any flat-out logical contradiction with respect to Eve's beliefs. She does believe she has exactly one of two e-spin beliefs, even while: she doesn't believe that she has the up belief; and she doesn't believe that she has the down belief. (10) This is an extraordinary state of affairs, the likes of which we just don't ever seem to find ourselves in. But surely it is no more logically contradictory than asserting the provability within some formal system of "Gv-iG"-where G is a Godel sentence of that formal system-while denying the provability of G and the provability of -iG. On the other hand, we are not making the move from (10) to: she believes that she doesn 't have the up belief; and (11) she believes that she doesn't have the down belief. The pair of conclusions about Eve in (11) obviously do logically contradict her taking herself to have exactly one of the two e-spin beliefs. But to draw either of them on the Bare theory when Eve is in the superposition, outer Eve would have to get into an eigenstate of belief about something particular about e-spin that she doesn't believe. There has been no suggestion of that possibility here.9 Nor do we need to establish anything like that. It suffices for our critique that the Bare theory is unable to represent the fact that we do sometimes take ourselves to believe a specified thing such as up when, according to the theory, we are in a state like (4). That is, it suffices to point out 44 Bub, Clifton, and Monton that the Bare theory's standard thinking leaves Eve with no impression whatsoever about whether or not she believes up on any particular occasion, even granting that she is mistakenly convinced that her e-spin beliefs are definite on all occasions. Now we have granted Albert that Eve will mistakenly (but without being aware of her mistake) believe that she either believes e-spin to be up or believes it to be down (which is, of course, what believing that her espin belief is definite is all about). But then if she is rational and knows in advance that she is measuring a spin-i particle, won't she also sometimes conclude that she believes up, and other times conclude that she believes down, even while she is in the superposition? That seems to be the obvious way to read Albert's claim that Eve "effectively knows" e's spin. But it's not on, for the simple reason that we cannot just endow Eve with magical powers of reasoning that transcend her states of belief as determined by the Bare theory. If we say that on some occasion while in the superposition Eve draws the conclusion that she believes up from her sense that her beliefs about e-spin are definite, we are saying something that flatly contradicts the Bare theory unless she can get into an eigenstate of drawing that conclusion. But the only way she can do that is if she is actually in an eigenstate of believing up and not in the superposition, as we have already emphasized.10 Another way to avoid our criticism might be for Albert to introduce a third level of Eve (giving us now the three faces of Eve) that reflects upon what her reflections about her beliefs are. When asked in the superposition if her reflection on what her e-spin belief is agrees with her actual e-spin belief, Eve can be modeled so as to respond (you guessed it) Yes. In fact, this is exactly what Albert uses to explain the repeatability of measurements, and the agreement between different experimenters who measure the same electron as to what its spin is (1992, 119-20). But that's not on either. Granted the Bare theory can explain intersubjective agreement between experimenters about what their measurement outcomes are. But what cannot be explained is why sometimes the experimenters will take that agreement to be established because both their results were up. Mere "agreement" is not enough. The same goes for the three faces of Eve. Even if her third face is convinced that her secondand first-level selves are in accord about her particular e-spin belief, that does nothing to give her any sense of what those selves have agreed to. Indeed, agreement tests between first-, second-, third-... nth-level Eve could never be used as the factual basis for her feeling or belief that she believes up after some particular measurement trial, simply because in superposition (4) she can never get into any sort of eigenstate that makes reference to just the one particular belief up.n THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 45 At this point the reader might have become suspicious about our introduction of inner and outer Eve, and that our troubles with the Bare theory stem from that naive conception of Eve. All there is to Eve is her beliefs and the way she reports on them, and nothing in between! That is certainly more faithful to Albert's text. But it does little to mute the problem; it only changes the terms in which the problem needs to be stated. The problem would then become that, even if Eve operationally qualifies as a person convinced of the definiteness of her e-spin belief, in the superposition she will never be able to qualify as a person convinced she has the particular belief that e-spin is up. Talking about an introspective side of Eve versus what an external observer would infer about what she takes her mental state to be changes nothing. And this is so even if we demand-as Albert's phrasing of Adam's question does-that Eve give verbal assent to the fact that her e-spin belief is "not uncertain and not confused and not vague and not superposed." So much for anticipating possible responses to our main criticism. The same criticism undermines the story Albert runs to explain why, on the Bare theory, experimenters take themselves to have confirmed the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics through their measurements (1992, 120-23). In the limit of an infinite sequence of measurements, an experimenter's brain will get into a quantum state that lies in an eigenspace of the relative frequency operator, with an eigenvalue equal to the quantummechanically predicted frequency for the measured observable. And so, according to the Bare theory, experimenters will take themselves to have obtained sequences that agree, in their long-run frequencies, with quantum statistical predictions. But experimenters as we know them seem to believe far more than that. They take themselves to have obtained particular sequences with particular characteristics. Merely getting into an eigenspace of the relative frequency operator will not ensure that on the Bare theory, since there are numerous distinct sequences that can yield the same long-run frequencies. Albert's own problem with this story is that it is too idealized. Determinateness with respect to the relative frequency operator is only achieved in the limit of an infinite number of measurements (1992,124-25). But even the Bare theory's idealized experimenter is unlike any we are ever likely to meet (or be). A similar point is made by Stein (1984) against Geroch's (1984) reading of Everett's interpretation (which is essentially the Bare theory; see notes 2 and 3). Stein asks how we ordinarily go about checking that measurement outcomes conform to the relative frequencies predicted by quantum mechanics, and answers (1984, 641, emphasis in the original): "We do so by performing the experiments and noting and counting their outcomes." We 46 Bub, Clifton, and Monton too have argued that that part of our ordinary experience cannot be accounted for on the Bare theory. However, Stein goes further than he should (or needs to) in suggesting that Geroch's observers are committed to the exclusive use of physically special apparatus designed to record only statistical information and "obliviate" particular outcomes: Geroch would have us (conceptually at least) interpose, between the experimenters and the real observation, apparatus that is designed just to detect whether or not the predicted frequencies (within the predicted range of variability) have occurred: what we may call "obliviating apparatus," designed expressly to ignore everything about the series of experiments that was not predicted or precluded with practical certainty by quantum mechanics. The idea that physicists might actually proceed in this way-spend money and time on instrumentation (automatic recording apparatus to feed data to computers, programs designed to report only the predicted aspects of the data and to destroy all records of details that were not predicted)-simply in the interest of conformity to the Everett-Geroch interpretation, seems worthy of Swift's Academy ofLagado. (1984, 642) In spite of the initial qualification, it appears that Stein regards the obliviating apparatuses required by the Bare theory (in Albert's or Geroch's version) as more than merely conceptual. This goes too far, since the Bare theory has no need to postulate devious devices designed specifically to lose or erase information about outcomes while retaining statistical information. The fact that an apparatus, or an observer's mind, only retains long-run statistical information follows quite straightforwardly from the observation that information is registered only if the state of the registering system is an eigenstate of registering it! This is a direct consequence of the standard thinking about superpositions employed in the Bare theory and needs no further special physical assumptions about the design of measurements, beyond those commonly granted in standard analyses of quantum measurement. So while we agree with Stein's starting point, we believe he overstates the case. Note, finally, that an idealized experimenter measuring an ensemble of electrons in superposition (2) will, in the limit, approach an eigenstate of answering Yes to the question, "Did you sometimes take yourself to believe up on the basis of your measurement result?" So isn't it the case, after all, that the Bare theory can explain why we sometimes take ourselves to believe up (and other times down) on the basis of our measurements? No. The alleged explanation here trades on an ambiguity in the word "sometimes." What's important is not just whether at some point or other (sometimes) in the experimenter's measurement outcome sequence THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 47 an up was taken to be registered, but whether on (say) trial number 13 (some particular time) the experimenter took himor herself to have measured up. Again, getting into an eigenspace of the relative frequency operator will not suffice for a definite answer to that question. We conclude that the Bare theory fails to explain why we take ourselves to have specific beliefs about measurement outcomes or outcome sequences in generic experimental situations. The only conclusion left is that if the Bare theory is true, then in states like (4) we really never believe that we believe up nor do we ever believe that we believe down after (any single!) measurement of an electron's spin. The same goes for believing that we believe anything particular about measurement outcome sequences beyond what their long-run frequencies are (and perhaps other features of outcome sequences definable in the long run, such as their randomness). If that's "What It Feels Like to Be in a Superposition" (Albert 1992, 112), then the Bare theory bears far less on the actual experiences of actual experimenters than we have been led by Albert to believe. 4. A Fig Leaf for the Bare Theory Fortunately, explanatory adequacy with regard to what we take ourselves to believe is quickly restored on a preferred-observable approach to universal, no-collapse quantum mechanics that simply denies standard thinking about superpositions from the very beginning.12 On such an approach, all the endless problems about beliefs about beliefs and responses about beliefs engendered above are cut off at their roots. Because any observable representing beliefs is granted the status of an observable that is always determinate, in superposition (4) inner Eve will believe c, |2 of the time that e-spin is up and |c2 ^ of the time that e-spin is down. Outer Eve will believe that she has definite beliefs, in agreement with the Bare theory. But she will also take herself to believe up \z\ \2 of the time and to believe down c21 2 of the time. And this is exactly in accord with all the things experimenters take themselves to believe. They will not be left (unknowingly) deluded, but more important, not be left without a sense of what they take their specific beliefs about e-spin to be. So making belief the preferred observable (whatever the physical basis of our beliefs turns out to be) is exactly the fig leaf the Bare theory needs to fill the gap between guaranteeing that experimenters have the sense that their beliefs are definite, and giving them the specific feelings they get about the specific beliefs they hold. Albert's Bare theory argument concerning what Eve takes herself to believe, the argument that we have spent the bulk of this paper analyzing, 48 Bub, Clifton, andMonton goes back at least as far as the paper by Albert and Loewer (1988). Interestingly, they do not treat the Bare theory as a possible end in itself, but use it as a springboard to draw a conclusion that is the same in spirit as our own. Albert and Loewer use the Eve scenario to argue that if we maintain the idea that experimenters never report that their beliefs are definite when that is in fact false, then their belief states cannot supervene on a superposition like (4), but must be specified in addition to it (1988, 205). In other words, accurate reporting requires a preferred-observable approach with the observable that underpins Eve's beliefs always taken to be determinate independently of the quantum state of Eve.13 We agree with Albert and Loewer's conclusion that the Eve scenario most naturally points to a preferred-observable approach, and that assuming reports of belief defmiteness are accurate (and there is no collapse) entails that conclusion. But we have shown that one can arrive at that conclusion without any such assumption. Our point has been that the Bare theory is too bare to account for the specificity of what we take ourselves to believe, and that actual determinateness of beliefs (as opposed to effective determinateness) is necessary to account for that specificity. The Bare theory's Adam and Eve fall short of what we take ourselves to be like. Having eaten of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of up and down, we know what's up. Notes We would like to thank John Bell, Jeff Barrett, Geoffrey Hellman, Tim Kenyon, and Steve Weinstein for helpful discussions (without committing them to endorsing anything that has been argued here). R. C. acknowledges support from the Vice President of Research at the University of Western Ontario, and B. M. acknowledges a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. 1. Writing down a ket like | 'Believes e-spin «p')Eve carries with it no commitment to there being a unique way to instantiate a state of Eve physically that would count (by operationalist or other criteria) as a state of her believing up. Furthermore, the quantummechanical observable that underpins "belief," whatever it is, is bound to be degenerate simply on the grounds that any particular belief, like the belief that e-spin is up, may be held concurrently with a host of other beliefs about other topics-beliefs that will vary from one experimenter to another. 2. Albert (1992,124) sees the Bare theory as an attractive way to elaborate Everett's (1957) ideas as a "one world" theory that preserves the standard way of thinking about superpositions (that is, a theory based on the "eigenvalue-eigenstate link" as the criterion for value-definiteness or determinateness). While Albert cites Lockwood (1989), who follows Deutsch (1985), Geroch (1984) has also independently proposed an interpretation of Everett that is very much along the same lines. For more recent technical and conceptual THE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 49 elaborations of this sort of "bare" interpretation of Everett, see Barrett (1994,1995,1996). Note that these interpretations differ from Bell's (1987) "one world" interpretation of Everett. Bell's interpretation-as he puts it (1987,133), "the pilot-wave theory without the trajectories"-is a preferred-observable interpretation of the type considered in section 2, with position in configuration space as the preferred, always determinate observable. We shall not be concerned here with the murky topic of Everett exegesis. 3. Geroch (cf. previous note) puts the aim of this explanatory project well: "what must be accounted for, if anything, is, not the specific classical outcomes deemed to have occurred for a specific experiment, but rather the general human impression that classical outcomes do occur" (1984, 628-29). But, unlike Albert, Geroch does no more than sketch how one might try to complete the project, and remains agnostic about its feasibility. Thus he continues: "This problem may well be soluble, but is probably beyond our present abilities; and, in any case, is basically not a problem in quantum mechanics" (1984, 629). 4. It is not important for what follows that the particulars of how Eve responds be the same in the two eigenstates of her e-spin belief (that is, responding with a whisper or a scream, via one set of neurons firing in her brain over another set that could equally well do the job, and so on). It is only important that the content of her response be the same. In other words, if we consider the subspace in the Hilbert space of Eve spanned by all those states of her that we are willing to count (by operational or other criteria) as states in which the content of her response is Yes, then what's important is that the two occurrences of the ket 'Yes, I have a definite e-spin belief'}Eve in (5) both be vectors that lie in that subspace. They need not generate the same ray, even though we have not taken the trouble to reflect that possibility in our notation. 5. For present purposes, we can think of Eve's physical state as an element of the tensor product of the Hilbert space that represents the features of her brain that register beliefs about e-spin with the Hilbert space associated with the parts of Eve involved in reflecting on what her beliefs are and responding to questions about them. It does not matter whether the part(s) of Eve's brain associated with the relevant beliefs are individuated neuroanatomically or functionally, that is, whether a Token or Type physicalism is taken to apply. And our case against the Bare theory is unaffected even if one eschews mind-brain identity in favor of the neurological causes of mere belief reports. 6. It should perhaps be pointed out that Albert is not entirely uncritical of these stories himself (1992,124-25). But once our "decisive" problem is laid out, it will become clear that we believe Albert should have been critical of these stories at a far earlier stage in his exposition. 7. It might have occurred to the reader that interaction (5) physically amounts to nothing more than a measurement of the value of the projection operator onto the subspace spanned by | 'Believes e-spin up'}Em and | 'Believes e-spin down')Em and, as such, carries little information about Eve's physical state beyond the fact that it lies in that subspace. But Albert is well aware of this (see his particle in a box analogy [1992, 117n]). Albert's point is that Eve in the superposition will be responding to Adam's question in exactly the same way as she would if she were in an eigenstate of e-spin belief (at least with regard to the content of her answer; see note 4), and therefore she (and others) will be given all the same impressions about her state of mind in the two cases. What purely physical meaning one assigns to all of this, in terms of what observable of Eve has actually been measured via (5), would presumably be regarded by Albert as beside the point. 8. This really is for ease of reference: we are not suggesting that Eve has multiple personalities, but only that she is capable of forming beliefs and also (second-order) beliefs about her beliefs. That much is necessary to get the story about Eve's delusion about her beliefs off the ground. 50 Bub, Clifton, andMonton 9. Evidently, the closest one can get to (11) on the Bare theory is to have Adam ask Eve the question, "Do you lack exactly one of the two beliefs in the set {Believes up, Believes down}!" Eve will (presumably) respond Yes to this in the superposition if that was her response to the original question about having exactly one of those two beliefs (that is, setting aside the previous section's worries about Yes versus No). But clearly answering Yes to both questions is logically consistent. Nevertheless, the Bare theory again remains explanatorily inadequate with respect to the specific things about e-spin we take ourselves not to believe subsequent to a particular measurement trial on an electron's spin. 10. The fact that superposed Eve is never able to take herself to believe up or take herself to believe down, even though she takes herself to believe exactly one of those, is analogous to a well-known difficulty faced by realistic quantum logic (as defended, for example, by Putnam [1975]) in its attempt to render meaningful statements such as "Every observable has a definite value." Recall that the difficulty is that, even though the proposition "Observable O has a definite value" may be identified with the disjunction "Q! or o2 or ... or on"-where (for any i) o, is the proposition "Observable O has value o,"-the truth of this disjunction, which is a tautology in quantum logic, turns out to be compatible with the falsity of all of its disjuncts. What makes this a difficulty for realistic quantum logic is that it waters down the very realism of definite values that logic was designed to prop up. By analogy, what we have argued against the Bare theory is that Eve's impression of the definiteness of her e-spin belief, expressed through her belief in a disjunction over her believing up versus down, necessarily yields only a watered-down representation of our actual experience, because Eve's belief cannot be accompanied, on any given occasion, by belief that a particular one of those disjuncts is true. However, there is a downside to this quantum logic analogy: we do not (and need not) claim that the Bare theory forces Eve (or Adam) to understand her answer to Adam as a conscious endorsement of quantum over classical logic. Indeed, just as Adam can ask Eve what she thinks about the definiteness of her e-spin belief and will always elicit a Yes response, he will always elicit that same response by asking her whether she takes the structure of her beliefs to conform to the logic of the classical "or"! 11. Jeff Barrett (in correspondence with the authors) has suggested another possible way to bring the Bare theory closer to endowing Eve with the (illusory) sense that her espin belief has the content that it should have. Let Eve make spin measurements on three identical electrons: the first in an up eigenstate, the second in a down eigenstate, and the third in a superposition thereof. Again, Eve will believe she formed a definite belief about all three measurement results. But, furthermore, she will believe that the result of her last measurement was indistinguishable (in its content and the impression it left on her) from the result of exactly one of her first two measurements! Alas, this new "agreement argument" is still too weak to explain why it is that we think we can specify which of the first two measurement results the third agreed with. Put another way, the Bare theory cannot vindicate the belief that the third result was indistinguishable from the first result, or the belief that it was indistinguishable from the second. Beliefs of this sort may well be mistakenly acquired in our world, but the Bare theory is still at a loss to explain why. 12. Note that preferred-observable interpretations, as we understand them, include the modal interpretations discussed by several contributors to this volume. In a modal interpretation formulated along the lines of the versions originally proposed by Kochen (1985) and by Dieks (1989), the preferred observable is derived from the quantum state and is therefore time-dependent, as opposed to a preferred-observable interpretation with a fixed, always determinate, observable. For a detailed analysis comprehending both these ways of choosing a preferred observable, see Bub and Clifton (1996). The situation is more complicated in Healey's (1989) modal interpretation; see Clifton (1996) for further discusTHE BARE THEORY HAS NO CLOTHES 57 sion. Bacciagaluppi, Elby, and Hemmo (1996) have shown how the determinateness of observables representing beliefs in the Kochen-Dieks modal interpretation requires decoherence arguments. 13. Albert and Loewer go on to argue that the best preferred-observable approach involves invoking "many-minds," but we do not wish to enter into that discussion here. Suffice it to say that we believe everything presently under discussion is neutral with respect to how one makes the preferred observable preferred, whether it be in terms of (one or many) hidden variables, worlds, or minds. References Albert, D. 1992. Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Albert, D., and B. Loewer. 1988. 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