A Subjective Approach to Quantum Probability

Carlton M. Caves, Christopher A. Fuchs, Rüdiger Schack

Stanley Gudder

Leslie Ballentine, Guillaume Adenier, Andrei Yu. Khrennikov +3 more

The concept of probability was prominent in the original foundations of quantum mechanics and continues to be so today. Indeed, the controversies regarding objective and subjective interpretations of probability have again become active. I argue that, although both objective and subjective probabilities have domains of relevance in QM, their roles are quite distinct. Even where both are legitimate, the objective and subjective probabilities differ, both conceptually and numerically. There are quantum probabilities that have no useful subjective interpretations, and there are subjective probabilities that cannot be realized as quantum probabilities.

Ronnie Hermens

Ching -Hung Woo

David Mermin’s exposition on QBism was excellent. However, it left the reconciliation between subjective and objective probability up in the air. There must be circumstances in which the subjective probabilities of different scientifically trained agents coincide, and hence the subjective and objective approaches also coincide. Quantum mechanics reminds us, if such a reminder is needed, that the human experiences that produce coinciding subjective probabilities, and hence interesting science, form a small subset of all human experiences.© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Veeravalli S. Varadarajan