Remarks on Unsharp Quantum Observables, Objectification, and Modal Interpretations

Busch, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-94-011-5084-2_12

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Paul Busch fleshed out his realist interpretation of quantum indeterminacy in various later publications [3,4,5,6]. In the Introduction of his review paper with G. Jaeger, "Unsharp Quantum Reality" [7], the interesting motivation of the authors for pursuing any realist research program at all is made explicit:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This leads to the infamous measurement problem: taking collapses seriously entails recognizing restrictions on the validity of unitary Schrödinger evolution, which raises a plethora of well-known problems. We shall therefore in the following explore an alternate route, namely acknowledging the universality of unitary evolution and rejecting the eigenvalueeigenstate link as a necessary condition for the attribution of (sharp) properties 4 . As we shall see, attributing properties to systems in the context of unitary quantum mechanics leads to an unexpected, intuitively peculiar non-classical picture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantum Reality, Perspectivalism and Covariance

Dieks

2019

Found Phys

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Paul Busch has emphasized on various occasions the importance for physics of going beyond a merely instrumentalist view of quantum mechanics. Even if we cannot be sure that any particular realist interpretation describes the world as it actually is, the investigation of possible realist interpretations helps us to develop new physical ideas and better intuitions about the nature of physical objects at the micro level. In this spirit, Paul Busch himself pioneered the concept of "unsharp quantum reality", according to which there is an objective non-classical indeterminacy-a lack of sharpness-in the properties of individual quantum systems.We concur with Busch's motivation for investigating realist interpretations of quantum mechanics and with his willingness to move away from classical intuitions. In this article we try to take some further steps on this road. In particular, we pay attention to a number of prima facie implausible and counter-intuitive aspects of realist interpretations of unitary quantum mechanics. We shall argue that from a realist viewpoint, quantum contextuality naturally leads to "perspectivalism" with respect to properties of spatially extended quantum systems, and that this perspectivalism is important for making relativistic covariance possible.

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