The Conceptual Completion and the Extensions of Quantum Mechanics (1932–1941)

Jagdish Mehra, Helmut Rechenberg

Jagdish Mehra, Helmut Rechenberg, Silvan S. Schweber

Aman Chawla

The completeness problem in quantum mechanics concerns whether the formalism constitutes a logically closed and ontologically complete description of physical reality. Historically, this led to a persistent tension between operational success and ontological clarity. This note argues that the Nonlocal Unification (NU) framework can provide the necessary conceptual ingredients to resolve this problem. Specifically, we show that if information is taken as a fundamental and conserved quantity, then quantum mechanics may emerge as an operationally complete theory while simultaneously being conceptually incomplete as a base ontology. This reframing might dissolve the classical tension between completeness and hidden-variable extensions by replacing the ontology of states with an informational geometry governed by conservation.

Christian Joas

Михаил Борисович Менский

Conceptual problems of the quantum theory of measurement are considered, which are embodied in well-known paradoxes and in Bell's inequalities. Arguments are advanced in favor of the viewpoint that these problems may hardly be solved without direct inclusion of the observer's consciousness in the theoretical description of a quantum measurement. Discussed in this connection is the so-called many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Everett, as is the extension of Everett's concept, which consists in the assumption that separating the quantum state components corresponding to alternative measurements is not only associated with the observer's consciousness but is completely identified with it. This approach is shown to open up qualitatively new avenues for the unification of physics and psychology and, more broadly, of the sciences and the humanities. This may lead to an extension of the theory of consciousness and shed light on significant and previously misunderstood phenomena in the sphere of consciousness.