Reality and the Role of the Wave Function in Quantum Theory

Arthur B. Komar

Rajesh G. Bhutkar

The conscious mind is a quantum field that itself is a virtual reality. It continuously plays a role of “DecohesionAgent” to collapse the superposed wave function in the form of apparent reality. Thus, the universe is swaying between these two fundamental realities of virtual and apparent reality. The meaning mechanism in the mind-brain functionality is responsible to create and tie these two realities based on the quantum effects. The meaning mechanism is a function of conscious mind and therefore it becomes a “Seat” for all the intelligence based knowledge systems and thus supports the relativistic nature of the universe.

道夫 和田

François-Igor Pris

I suggest a contextual realist interpretation of Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics. The principal point is a correct understanding of the concept of reality and taking into account the categorical distinction between the ideal and the real. Within my interpretation, consciousness of the observer does not play any metaphysical role. The proposed approach can also be understood as a return to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, corrected within the framework of contextual realism. The contextual realism allows one to get rid of the metaphysical problems encountered by various interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the relational one. A wave function neither literally reflects an “exterior reality”, nor is it merely a predictive mathematical tool. In particular, an entangled wave function can be viewed as the formal cause of quantum correlations whose reality is contextual. The reduction of a wave function is not a real physical process. And there are no autonomous quantum events which would be different from the facts of their representation. The quantum measurement problem results from a confusion between the categories of the ideal and the real. It is dissolved logically. The quantum theory plays the role of a Wittgensteinian rule (norm), “measuring” physical reality within a language game of its application.

Oreste Piccioni, Werner A. W. Mehlhop

Jacob A. Barandes

This paper provides a detailed and unified historical account of early debates over wave-function realism, the modern term for the view that the wave function of quantum theory is physically real. As this paper will show, the idea of physical waves associated with particles had its roots in work by Einstein and de Broglie, who both originally thought of these waves as propagating in three-dimensional physical space. De Broglie quickly turned this wave--particle duality into an early pilot-wave theory, on which a particle's associated ``phase wave'' piloted or guided the particle along its trajectory. Schrödinger built on de Broglie's phase-wave hypothesis to provide a comprehensive account of the nascent quantum theory. However, Schrödinger's new ``undulatory mechanics'' came at the cost of replacing de Broglie's phase waves propagating in physical space with a wave function propagating in a system's abstract configuration space. The present work will argue that this move from three-dimensional physical space to a many-dimensional configuration space was a decisive reason why the founders of quantum theory uniformly abandoned the physical reality of the wave function. This paper will further clarify that de Broglie introduced two distinct pilot-wave theories, and will then argue that it was Bohm's rediscovery of the second of these two pilot-wave theories over two decades later, as well as Bohm's vociferous defense of wave-function realism, that were responsible for resurrecting the idea of an ontological wave function. Finally, this paper will describe how the influence of Schrödinger and Bohmended up playing a central role in Everett's development of the ``many worlds'' interpretation.