Symposiums Papers: Two No-Collapse Interpretations of Quantum Theory

O. Passon

Peter Bruza, William F. Lawless, Keith van Rijsbergen +2 more

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Quantum Interaction, QI 2009, held in Saarbrcken, Germany, in March 2009. The 21 revised full papers presented together with the 3 position papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers show the cross-disciplinary nature of quantum interaction covering topics such as computation, cognition, decision theory, information retrieval, information systems, social interaction, computational linguistics and finance.

Daniel Kuby, Patrick Thomas Fraser

In 1957, Feyerabend delivered a paper titled ‘On the Quantum-Theory of Measurement’ at the Colston Research Symposium in Bristol to sketch a completion of von Neumann's measurement scheme without collapse, using only unitary quantum dynamics and well-motivated statistical assumptions about macroscopic quantum systems. Feyerabend's paper has been recognised as an early contribution to quantum measurement, anticipating certain aspects of decoherence. Our paper reassesses the physical and philosophical content of Feyerabend's contribution, detailing the technical steps as well as its overall philosophical motivations and consequences. Summarising our results, Feyerabend interpreted collapse as a positivist assumption in quantum mechanics leading to a strict distinction between the uninterpreted formalism of unitary evolution in quantum mechanics and the classically interpreted observational language describing post-measurement outcomes. Thus Feyerabend took the no-collapse completion of the von Neumann measurement scheme to show the dispensability of the positivist assumption, leading the way to a realistic interpretation of quantum theory. We note, however, that there are substantial problems with his account of measurement that bring into question its viability as a legitimate foil to the orthodox view. We further argue that his dissatisfaction with the von Neumann measurement scheme is indicative of early views on theoretical pluralism.

Alfred Lands

Alfred Landé

Per‐Olov Löwdin, N. Yngve Öhrn, John R. Sabin +1 more

This document provides papers presented at the International Symposium on Quantum Biology and Quantum Pharmacology. The individual papers have been cataloged separately. (FI)