We propose a reformulation of quantum mechanics as a theory of unresolved uncertainty. The framework is formulated in the language of complex-valued measure theory, regarded as a pre-probabilistic counterpart of ordinary probability theory. In this formulation, additivity, conditioning, independence, mixtures, transition kernels, and temporal divisibility retain natural linear forms at the potentiality level, while non-classical probability-level features such as interference arise from the nonlinear Born map. Measurement is described as Bayesian-type conditioning of potentialities on actualized information, and non-selective measurement as the replacement of coherent potentiality by statistical mixtures of conditional branches. Mixed states, decoherence, composite systems, entanglement, and Bell-type correlations are also given a unified potentiality-level interpretation. The resulting formulation is empirically equivalent to standard quantum mechanics, but it makes explicit a pre-probabilistic description of physical reality that is usually implicit in the Hilbert-space formalism.
We propose a reformulation of quantum mechanics as a theory of unresolved uncertainty. The framework is formulated in the language of complex-valued measure theory, regarded as a pre-probabilistic counterpart of ordinary probability theory. In this formulation, additivity, conditioning, independence, mixtures, transition kernels, and temporal divisibility retain natural linear forms at the potentiality level, while non-classical probability-level features such as interference arise from the nonlinear Born map. Measurement is described as Bayesian-type conditioning of potentialities on actualized information, and non-selective measurement as the replacement of coherent potentiality by statistical mixtures of conditional branches. Mixed states, decoherence, composite systems, entanglement, and Bell-type correlations are also given a unified potentiality-level interpretation. The resulting formulation is empirically equivalent to standard quantum mechanics, but it makes explicit a pre-probabilistic description of physical reality that is usually implicit in the Hilbert-space formalism.
Quantum mechanics represents physical states through complex amplitudes, state vectors, and density operators, yet the ontological status of these objects remains interpretation-dependent. This paper develops a closure-based formulation in which a quantum state is interpreted as a representation of contextually partial relational closure: the state possesses definite mathematical and relational structure while remaining unresolved relative to one or more observational contexts. Within this language, decoherence differentiates closure channels and redistributes locally accessible coherence into relational structure; environmental redundancy stabilizes records; and classical facts emerge as approximately fixed, effectively commuting, redundantly recorded structures. Measurement is separated into three problems—context, weight, and outcome—so that decoherence, Born weighting, and unique outcome selection are not conflated. The paper then distinguishes two stronger research programs from the exact reformulation. First, it asks whether Hilbert-space quantum mechanics can be reconstructed from primitive closure, incompatibility, composition, and consistency principles. Second, it formulates a falsifiable closure-history extension in which physically relevant information might exist beyond the present density operator. Quantum Partial Closure Theory is therefore presented as a relational interpretation and information calculus, a reconstruction program, and a prospective experimental framework rather than as an established replacement for quantum mechanics. Keywords: quantum foundations; closure; wavefunction ontology; coherence; entanglement; decoherence; measurement; classical emergence; quantum information; Hilbert-space reconstruction The wavefunction question Quantum theory is operationally clear about what a wavefunction does. For a normalized pure-state vector ψ∈H and a projective measurement with alternatives {Π_i}, the Born weights are p_i=Tr(ρ_ψ Π_i ), ρ_ψ=ψψ^†. For a rank-one outcome Π_i=e_i e_i^†, this reduces to p_i=|e_i^† ψ|^2. Yet the mathematical clarity of the formalism does not by itself settle what the state vector is ontologically. Interpretations of quantum theory differ over whether the state should be regarded as physical, epistemic, relational, branch-relative, dispositional, or otherwise. The present paper proposes a specific interpretive and reconstructive language: partial relational closure. The central claim is not that the wavefunction is literally a new material substance called closure. Rather, ▭(ψ "is interpreted as a Hilbert-space representation of coherent partial relational closure" .) The word partial is crucial. It does not mean that a state is a scalar fraction of being real or complete. It means that information and constraint are distributed across local, coherent, and relational sectors, and that closure is always specified relative to a context. A Bell state, for example, can be locally indefinite while being relationally exact. A decohered state can be closed with respect to one effective macroscopic context while retaining a larger quantum embedding. A selective outcome can be locally definite without implying that every larger-scale relation in the universe is globally closed. This formulation is motivated by three observations. First, projective dephasing is naturally closure-like because it is idempotent. Second, modern quantum information already supplies exact measures for local coherence, correlations, and record redundancy. Third, the quantum-to-classical transition is naturally relational: local coherence can disappear from a subsystem while information migrates into system-environment correlations. The paper has three epistemic layers. Layer A uses established quantum mathematics. Layer B derives exact information identities and interprets them in closure language. Layer C states reconstruction conjectures and an explicitly speculative beyond-QM closure-history hypothesis. These layers are kept separate throughout. A quantum system is not structureless before measurement. Its amplitudes, phases, conservation relations, and correlations are tightly organized. What remains unresolved is how that structure will become locally definite relative to a chosen measurement context. The partial-closure view therefore distinguishes three broad regimes: Coherent partial closure. Alternatives remain phase-related and can interfere. Contextual differentiation. Interaction or dephasing suppresses coherence between alternatives relative to a context without necessarily choosing one. Selective local closure. A particular outcome is conditioned or realized relative to the measurement relation. In this language, wave-like behavior corresponds to spatially or otherwise contextually unresolved coherent closure, while particle-like detection corresponds to localized closure. Entanglement is closure stored in relations rather than in isolated subsystems. Decoherence is not simply destruction: in a globally pure description it can be a transfer of local coherence into relational entanglement. Classical objectivity appears when relevant records become stable and redundantly accessible. The framework does not assign consciousness a privileged dynamical role. An observer is a partial closure process for constraining possibilities. Explainer video Watch on YouTube (Roots of Reality): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYx_omk3h3A The video, its thumbnail and description are included in this record.
Abstract In the 1950s and 1960s it was causing interest among physicists that in the formalism of quantum mechanics (complex-valued) ‘probability amplitudes’ obeyed laws similar to the laws obeyed by probabilities in the ordinary probability calculus. But this did not then lead decisively to the claim that probabilities should be represented by complex numbers. It became fashionable instead to regard probability amplitudes as an abstract concept from which actual probabilities could be derived by taking the squared moduli of the amplitudes. In this monograph, however, we make another attempt to show how probability amplitudes might after all be identified with actual probabilities. To do this, probability itself is interpreted in a rational Bayesian manner (i.e. as an extension of logic) and a new (complex-valued) probability theory is formulated that incorporates the uncertainty principle (i.e. that takes account of the fact that acquisition of knowledge of a quantum mechanical process generally interferes with it). Taking this probability theory as the new logic of science, and assuming certain physical laws and properties of matter, an interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is built up. It is consistent with the usual quantum mechanical formalism but allows a clear distinction to be made between the physical world and our knowledge of it.
We propose an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the wavefunction represents unresolved potential relative to an observer, measurement is deterministic resonance stabilisation, and Born-rule probability quantifies the observer’s incomplete access to the full entropic and phase-geometric state of the observer–system interaction. An observer is defined operationally as any bounded system capable of converting external entropy into internal coherence. On this view,superposition is not a set of co-existing realities but an unresolved field of possible coherence resolutions; collapse is not a stochastic discontinuity but a deterministic phase-lock between observer and system; and the classical world is the high-coherence limit in which environmental observation is dense enough to continuously stabilise macroscopic facts.The interpretation preserves the full predictive machinery of quantum mechanics while providing a unified account of the measurement problem, the Born rule, decoherence, entanglement, delayed choice, Wigner’s friend, and the quantum-to-classical transition. We formalise the framework through a resonance-selection rule, an observer equation of collapse, and a prime-modal state-space structure, and identify five classes of empirically accessible predictions.
This doctoral thesis in mathematics consists of three articles that explore the probabilistic structure of quantum mechanics and quantization from a novel perspective. The thesis adopts a probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which views the archetypical quantum experiments of Bell- and double-slit- type as violating the principle of non-contextuality, i.e., the assertion that all events and observables are always representable on one single Kolmogorovian probability space, rather than the principles of realism or locality. This probabilistic interpretation posits that quantum mechanics constitutes a probability theory that adheres to the principle of contextuality, and that quantum events explicitly occur at the level of measurement, rather than the level of that which is measured, as these are traditionally interpreted. The thesis establishes a natural connection between the probabilistic structure of quantum mechanics, specifically Born’s rule, and the frequentist interpretation of probability. The major conceptual step in establishing this connection is to re-identify quantum observables instead as unitary representations of groups, whose irreducible sub-representations correspond to the observable’s different possible outcomes, rather than primarily as self- adjoint operators. Furthermore, the thesis reformulates classical statistical mechanics in the formalism of quantum mechanics, known as the Koopman-von Neumann formulation, to demonstrate that classical statistical mechanics also adheres to the principle of contextuality. This finding is significant because it raises questions about the existence of a hidden-variable model of classical statistical mechanics of the kind as examined in Bell’s theorem, where this presumed hidden-variable model traditionally has been seen as that which distinguishes "classical" from "quantum" probability.A novel reformulation of quantization is proposed considering it rather in terms of the representation theory of Hamiltonian flows and their associated inherent symmetry group of symplectomorphisms. Contrary to the traditional view of quantization, this formulation can be regarded as compatible with the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics and offers a new perspective on the quantization of gravity.
We propose Coordinate Slicing Theory (CST), an interpretive framework for quantum mechanics that maintains a single realized reality without hidden variables, branching worlds, or observer-dependent collapse. CST posits that physical systems extend not only through spacetime but also through an ontic probability manifold P — a real, observer-independent structure encoding unresolved potential for definiteness, rather than a catalogue of pre-existing outcomes or mere epistemic uncertainty. Definite facts are created through interaction via "slicing": a localized interaction that produces stable relational records by localizing a system's extension in P. Which outcome a slicing event creates is irreducibly chancy: CST relocates and reframes the selection problem rather than solving it, contributing an ontology of the pre-outcome situation and a covariant account of when and where facts are created. Classical definiteness arises from continual environmental slicing, while quantum phenomena appear when extension in P persists until interaction. Entanglement is reinterpreted geometrically as shared probability structure: entangled systems occupy a common structure in P, so a single slicing event jointly creates correlated outcomes without signaling, temporal ordering, or pre-existing values. CST is an interpretation, not a modification of quantum dynamics, and is empirically equivalent to standard quantum mechanics. We construct explicit toy models in which quantum states arise as projections of densities on probability manifolds (S² for qubits, CP³ for qubit pairs), with unitary dynamics lifted to a flow on the manifold. A no-go lemma shows that deterministic responses cannot reproduce the Born rule for pure states; the models therefore employ stochastic likelihood responses, which reproduce Born statistics exactly for all preparations, recover projective collapse and repeatability, satisfy no-signaling, reproduce Bell correlations, and yield a foliation-independent update scheme for spacelike-separated interactions.
The notion of uncertainty in the description of a physical system has assumed prodigious importance in the development of quantum theory. Overcoming the early misunderstanding and confusion, the concept grew continuously and still remains an active and fertile research field. Curious new insights and correlations are gained and developed in the process with the introduction of new 'measures' of uncertainty or indeterminacy and the development of quantum measurement theory. In this article we intend to reach a fairly uptodate status report of this yet unfurling concept and its interrelation with some distinctive quantum features like nonlocality, steering and entanglement/ inseparability. Some recent controversies are discussed and the grey areas are mentioned.