Quantum Structures and the Nature of Reality

Diederik Aerts, Jarosław Pykacz

Fiorito, Paolo

This paper proposes a timeless interpretation of quantum mechanics in which fundamental reality is configurational rather than temporal. What we perceive as the temporal evolution of a particle is reinterpreted as our sequential perspective on a static structure of spatial correlations. Quantum superposition reveals this nature: all possible spatial configurations coexist in a timeless reality, and only when we—bound by time—observe the system, do we project this multiplicity into a temporal sequence. When we measure a quantum system, we do not collapse a wave function but rather synchronize our clock-system with a specific section of the timeless structure. This interpretation connects naturally with existing timeless approaches such as the Page-Wootters mechanism and Wheeler-DeWitt equation, while offering a distinctive perspective on the nature of the wave function, measurement, and the emergence of time from correlations within an atemporal quantum reality.

Stig Stenholm

Graham P. Smetham

The Buddhist metaphysical conceptual analysis of the nature of reality has always been founded upon the basis of a rigorous employment of scrupulously coherent conceptual analysis, which is in turn based upon an empirical observation of experience in a manner appropriate to the time, although one major difference between the empirical attitude of Western science and philosophy during the age of science and that of Buddhism was the Buddhist development of rigorous techniques of meditation in order to explore the structure and nature of consciousness. In this paper I will use the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti‘s imaginative deconstruction of reality, in the context of quantum theory, to try to answer the question which seems to be posed by quantum theory: Is 'Reality' really real? In our search for the ultimate nature of reality we have to leave behind the 'seeming' appearances of the everyday world, however persuasive the appearance may be, and break through to a more 'ultimate truth' concerning the nature of reality. We shall discover that Dharmakirti's philosophical analysis, alongside other Buddhist insights, which lead to the 'ultimate' realm of 'empty' Mindnature, prefigures modern quantum discoveries.

Diederik Aerts, Thomas Durt, Andrey Anatoljevich Grib +2 more

Bunge, Mario