Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T08:24:41.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empirical Adequacy and the Availability of Reliable Records in Quantum Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffrey A. Barrett
Jeffrey A. Barrett*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of California, Irvine
*
‡Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92717.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In order to judge whether a theory is empirically adequate one must have epistemic access to reliable records of past measurement results that can be compared against the predictions of the theory. Some formulations of quantum mechanics fail to satisfy this condition. The standard theory without the collapse postulate is an example. Bell's reading of Everett's relative-state formulation is another. Furthermore, there are formulations of quantum mechanics that only satisfy this condition for a special class of observers, formulations whose empirical adequacy could only be judged by an observer who records her measurement results in a special way. Bohm's theory is an example. It is possible to formulate hidden-variable theories that do not suffer from such a restriction, but these encounter other problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 49 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Jeffrey Bub and Jeoron Vink for discussions concerning Bohm's theory and how it might be extended and the Kochen-Specker theorem. I would also like to thank Barry Loewer, David Albert, Rob Clifton, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

Albert, D. Z. (1992), Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, J. A. (1994), “The Suggestive Properties of Quantum Mechanics without the Collapse Postulate”, Erkenntnis 41: 233–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, J. S. (1981), “Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists”, in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–138.Google Scholar
Bell, J. S. (1984), “Beables for Quantum Field Theory”, in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 173–180.Google Scholar
Bohm, D. (1952), “A Suggested Interpretation of the Quantum Theory in terms of Hidden Variables, I and II”, Physical Review 85: 166–179 and 180–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohm, D. and Hiley, (1993), The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bub, J. (1995), “Interference, Noncommutativity, and Determinateness in Quantum Mechanics”, Topoi, Vol. 14, No. 1: 39–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, H. III. (1957), “‘Relative State’ Formulation of Quantum Mechanics”, Reviews of Modern Physics 29: 454–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, H. III. (1973), “Theory of the Universal Wave Function”, in DeWitt, B. S. and Graham, N. (eds.), The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 3–140.Google Scholar
Farhi, E., Goldstone, J., Gutmann, S. (1989), “How Probability Arises in Quantum Mechanics”, Annals of Physics, V192, N: 368–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell-Mann, M. and Hartle, J. B. (1990), “Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology”, in Zurek, W. H. (ed.). Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, vol. VIII Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 425–458.Google Scholar
Kochen, S. and Specker, E. P. (1967), “On the Problem of Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics”, Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 17: 59–87.Google Scholar
Mermin, N. D. (1990), “Simple Unified Form for the Major No-Hidden-Variables Theorems”, Physical Review Letters 65: 3373–3376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Omnés, R. (1992), “Consistent Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics”, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 64, No. 2: 339–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pais, A. (1986), Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Saunders, S. (1995), “Time, Quantum Mechanics, and Decoherence”, Synthese, V102, N: 235–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vink, J. C. (1993), “Quantum Mechanics in Terms of Discrete Beables”, Physical Review A 48: 1808–1818.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Neumann, J. (1932), Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. Berlin: Springer. Reprinted and translated as Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, R. Beyer (trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wheeler, J. A. and Zurek, W. H. (eds.) (1983), Quantum Theory and Measurement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeh, H. D. (1970), “On the Interpretation of Measurement in Quantum Theory”, Foundations of Physics 1: 69–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar