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Can Transactional Description of Quantum-Mechanical Reality be Considered Complete?

Peter J. Lewis

Published Nov 3, 2010• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a promising way of fulfilling Einstein’s vision of a completed quantum mechanics. However, it has received forceful criticism from Maudlin. Indeed, I shall argue that the force of Maudlin’s criticisms has been underestimated, and that none of the extant responses are adequate. An adequate response, I contend, requires reconceptualizing the kinds of explanations the Transactional Interpretation gives. I sketch such a reinterpretation and argue that it does not fall prey to Maudlin’s objections. However, there remain significant obstacles in the way of formulating a fully adequate version of the Transactional Interpretation.

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arXiv:1610.04609•Nov 20, 2018•8 citations
The Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a promising way of fulfilling Einstein’s vision of a completed quantum mechanics. However, it has received forceful criticism from Maudlin. Indeed, I shall argue that the force of Maudlin’s criticisms has been underestimated, and that none of the extant responses are adequate. An adequate response, I contend, requires reconceptualizing the kinds of explanations the Transactional Interpretation gives. I sketch such a reinterpretation and argue that it does not fall prey to Maudlin’s objections. However, there remain significant obstacles in the way of formulating a fully adequate version of the Transactional Interpretation.
Providing a comprehensive exposition of the transactional interpretation (TI) of quantum mechanics, this book sheds new light on long-standing problems in quantum theory such as the physical meaning of the 'Born Rule' for the probabilities of measurement results, and demonstrates the ability of TI to solve the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. It provides robust refutations of various objections and challenges to TI, such as Maudlin's inconsistency challenge, and explicitly extends TI into the relativistic domain, providing new insight into the basic compatibility of TI with relativity and the meaning of 'virtual particles.' It breaks new ground in approaches to interpreting quantum theory and presents a compelling new ontological picture of quantum reality. This substantially revised and updated second edition is ideal for researchers and graduate students interested in the philosophy of physics and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Cramer's (1986) transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics posits retrocausal influences in quantum processes in an attempt to alleviate some of the interpretational difficulties of the Copenhagen interpretation. In response to Cramer's theory, Maudlin (2002) has levelled a significant objection against any retrocausal model of quantum mechanics. I present here an examination of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics and an analysis of Maudlin's critique. I claim that, although Maudlin correctly isolates the weaknesses of Cramer's theory, his justification for this weakness is off the mark. The cardinal vice of the transactional interpretation is its failure to provide a sufficient causal structure to constrain uniquely the behaviour of quantum systems and I contend that this is due to a lack of causal symmetry in the theory. In contrast, Maudlin attributes this shortcoming to retrocausality itself and emphasises an apparently fundamental incongruence between retrocausality and his own metaphysical picture of reality. I conclude by arguing that the problematic aspect of this incongruence is Maudlin's assumptions about what is appropriate for such a metaphysical picture.
A comprehensive exposition of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (TI), this book sheds new light on longstanding problems in quantum theory and provides insight into the compatibility of TI with relativity. It breaks new ground in interpreting quantum theory, presenting a compelling new picture of quantum reality. The book shows how TI can be used to solve the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and explain other puzzles, such as the origin of the 'Born Rule' for the probabilities of measurement results. It addresses and resolves various objections and challenges to TI, such as Maudlin's inconsistency challenge. It explicitly extends TI into the relativistic domain, providing new insight into the basic compatibility of TI with relativity and the physical meaning of 'virtual particles'. This book is ideal for researchers and graduate students interested in the philosophy of physics and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The interpretational problems of quantum mechanics are considered. The way in which the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the transactional interpretation, is presented. The basic element of this interpretation is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The transactional interpretation is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. A detailed comparison of the transactional and Copenhagen interpretations is made in the context of well-known quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperimente and "paradoxes." The transactional interpretation permits quantum-mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge" as in the Copenhagen interpretation. The transactional interpretation is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum-mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse." It also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law ($P=\ensuremath{\psi}{\ensuremath{\psi}}^{*}$), basic elements of the Copenhagen interpretation.
What does it mean to say that an event is physically possible?One might say, in the spirit of everyday usage, that an event is physically possible if its occurrence is consistent with the laws of physics.But which laws of physics, starting from when?Here things get tricky.In a Laplacian universe governed by the fully-deterministic laws of classical electrodynamics and mechanics, exactly one future is consistent with any complete and precise specification of initial conditions.Given an incomplete, imprecise specification -the best that human observers can achieve, even in principle -many futures may appear to be physically possible, but only one of them actually is.In this kind of universe, our intuitive notion that many different outcomes of an experiment, for example, are physically possible is just an ignorancedriven delusion.Philosopher of physics Ruth Kastner's new book, The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, subtitled The Reality of Possibility, takes on this question of the meaning of physical possibility in the theoretical context defined by relativistic quantum field theory.Lest this seem daunting, be assured that this is a philosophical book; aside from Chapters 5 and 6 dealing with technical objections, it emphasizes ontological questions and employs the physics -all of which is clearly presented for the non-expert -as a way to raise them.The ontological questions that it raises, not just 'what is possibility?' but also 'what is actuality?' and 'what are space and time?' underlie not just physics but any theory of action.The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is, therefore, not just about the interpretation of quantum mechanics; it is about how 'nature makes its choice' in any circumstance, and how 'the actual arises from the potential' (205) as a result.After briefly introducing quantum theory and its various interpretations in Chapter 1, Kastner addresses, in Chapter 2, the essential preliminary question of what is to count as an acceptable scientific explanation.The divide between realists and instrumentalists about quantum theory -or between 'ontic ' and 'non-ontic' approaches
The Transactional Interpretation has been subject at various times to a challenge based on a type of thought experiment first proposed by Maudlin. It has been argued by several authors that such experiments do not in fact constitute a significant problem for the transactional picture. The purpose of this work is to point out that, when the relativistic level of the interpretation is considered, Maudlin-type challenges cannot even be mounted, since the putative 'slow-moving offer wave,' taken as subject to contingent confirmation, does not exist. This is a consequence of the Davies relativistic quantum-mechanical version of the direct-action theory together with the asymmetry between fermionic field sources and bosonic fields. The Maudlin challenge therefore evaporates completely when the relativistic level of the theory is taken into account.