Philosophy of Science

The Impossibility of Accurate State Self-Measurements

Thomas Breuer

Published Jun 1, 1995• 77 citations

Abstract

It is shown that it is impossible for an observer to distinguish all present states of a system in which he or she is contained, irrespective of whether this system is a classical or a quantum mechanical one and irrespective of whether the time evolution is deterministic or stochastic. As a corollary, this implies that it is impossible for an observer to measure the EPR-correlations between himself or herself and an outside system. Implications of the main result are discussed for how we have to conceive of universally valid theories.

DOI: 10.1086/289852

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