The Reality of the Wavefunction: Old Arguments and New

In Alberto Cordero (ed.), Philosophers Look at Quantum Mechanics. Springer Verlag (2019)
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Abstract

The recent philosophy of Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, represents an attempt to solve the traditional puzzles in the foundations of quantum theory by denying the objective reality of the quantum state. Einstein had hoped to remove the spectre of nonlocality in the theory by also assigning an epistemic status to the quantum state, but his version of this doctrine was recently proved to be inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics. In this essay, I present plausibility arguments, old and new, for the reality of the quantum state, and expose what I think are weaknesses in QBism as a philosophy of science.

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References found in this work

Is Logic Empirical?Hilary Putnam - 1968 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 5.
Can the world be only wavefunction?Tim Maudlin - 2010 - In Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent & David Wallace (eds.), Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Against ”Measurement'.J. S. Bell - 2004 - In John Stewart Bell (ed.), Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics: collected papers on quantum philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 213--231.
What is a wavefunction.Wayne C. Myrvold - 2015 - Synthese 192 (10):3247-3274.

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