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Primitive ontology and quantum state in the GRW matter density theory

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Abstract

The paper explains in what sense the GRW matter density theory (GRWm) is a primitive ontology theory of quantum mechanics and why, thus conceived, the standard objections against the GRW formalism do not apply to GRWm. We consider the different options for conceiving the quantum state in GRWm and argue that dispositionalism is the most attractive one.

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Notes

  1. The prominence of the GRW theory may be somewhat surprising, because the physics literature features collapse theories which are better developed and generally regarded as more realistic, such as the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) theory. These latter theories are, however, mathematically more demanding, whereas they do not seem to differ significantly from the GRW theory on the conceptual and ontological level. For this reason, the philosophical debate has tended to focus on GRW instead of CSL; we will discuss the justification for this move in Sect. 3. For a comprehensive review of different collapse models, see Bassi and Ghirardi (2003).

  2. For further criticism of the claim that the low-density worlds are structurally equivalent to the high-density world, see Albert (forthcoming, chap. 7).

  3. An anonymous referee has pointed out to us that there are variants of the GRW theory which can deal with identical particles. See Tumulka (2006b) for details.

  4. There are, of course, other ways to understand causality in physics, but this debate is beyond the scope of the present paper. All we need to claim here is that the Blondeau/Ghins proposal is a reasonable way to spell out the causal character of BM.

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the spring meeting of the German Physical Society (Berlin, March 2014), the CROSS workshop on the quantum state (Lausanne, May 2014) and the II PERSP workshop on space-time and the wavefunction (Barcelona, May 2014). We thank the participants of these events, especially Wayne Myrvold, Nino Zanghì, Guido Bacciagaluppi and Jeremy Butterfield, for many helpful remarks. We are also indebted to Albert Solé, Carl Hoefer and two anonymous referees for valuable comments.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Lausanne, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Matthias Egg & Michael Esfeld

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  1. Matthias Egg
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Correspondence to Matthias Egg.

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Egg, M., Esfeld, M. Primitive ontology and quantum state in the GRW matter density theory. Synthese 192, 3229–3245 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0590-3

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