The content of the present book is the result of a work developed over a period of more than fifteen years, to which many students and collaborators, as well as renowned philosophers and physicists, have contributed in various aspects, as the references testify. The aim of this work has been to present the MHI in a systematic and organic way, incorporating recent discussions and making explicit its underlying motivations. I have tried to show that the proposal does not address isolated interpretative topics, but provides a broad, articulated, and consistent view to make sense of the quantum world. Throughout the chapters, I have argued in favor of the reasonableness and fruitfulness of the proposal. Of course, the reasons put forward are not directly empirical, but this does not make them any less sound. The main arguments presented in the text can be summarized in the following points: Three more general aspects can be added to these advantages:
Abstract Quantum theory has presented scientists and philosophers of science with a series of perplexing questions. It seems to many that any attempt to comprehend a world described by quantum theory will require revision in our understanding of the nature of things far more radical than the revision in our understanding of the nature of space and time demanded by the theories of relativity. It has been claimed that to comprehend quantum theory we must revise our very understanding of such matters as the objective nature of reality and its independence from our perception of it, the nature of a complex system and its relation to its components, and the nature of causal and other kinds of determination in the world.
Abstract Many theories and models from physics are probabilistic. This observation raises several philosophical questions: What are probabilities in physics? Do they reflect objective chances which exist independently of the human mind? Or do they only express subjective credences and thus capture our own uncertainty about the world? Finally, which metaphysical lessons, if at all, can one draw from the largely probabilistic character of physics? The chapters collected in this volume address these questions and provide a detailed philosophical appraisal of the status of probabilities in all of physics. Particular emphasis is laid upon statistical physics and quantum mechanics. Many chapters reflect a desire to understand probabilities from physics as objective chances. These chances are characterized, e.g., as time-averages, as probabilities from a best system in the terms of David Lewis, or using the Boltzmannian typicality approach. Other chapters are sympathetic to a Bayesian view of probabilities in physics. The chapters about quantum mechanics elucidate the peculiar characteristics of quantum correlations and discuss strategies to justify the Born Rule. Finally, the chapters of this volume demonstrate how closely interpretive issues about probabilities are entangled with other foundational problems of physics such as the Reversibility Paradox, the ontology of the quantum world and the question whether the world is deterministic.
In 1964 John Bell demonstrated that quantum theory does not always agree with our classical intuitions about what should happen in the laboratory. Bell's uncanny skill as a translator of the classical commitments voiced by EPR into the language of mathematics is remarkable, all the more so given that he was equally at home in the world of quantum theory. In this chapter, we shift our attention to the latter perspective. We start by reviewing some of the key experiments that shed light on the quantum prediction. We then consider in some detail the singular feature that distinguishes quantum theory from all other previous physical theories, namely, its use of the principle of superposition. Finally, we reexamine polarization, this time from the quantum perspective, for the sake of constructing the quantum prediction for Bell-type experiments. The concepts introduced here form the core of the vocabulary employed in the next chapter, which treats various philosophical interpretations of quantum entanglement. In particular, this chapter's discussion of photon polarization prepares the way for the next chapter's discussion of quantum theory's so-called “measurement problem.”