[Author’s Note (April 2026)]Supersession Notice: This 2025 paper explores the early KB-Flux framework. It has been structurally overhauled and formally superseded by “The Light & Flux (L&F) Framework (2026)”. While the 2025 version relies on cognitive metaphors—treating the wave function as a “generative model” —the 2026 L&F framework provides a rigorous mathematical proof deriving complex Hilbert space from finite-inference constraints. It replaces “phenomenal grammar” with the Simplex Projection (𐍀), grounded in metabolic and thermodynamic mandates. Researchers seeking the formal Non-Derivability Principle and a stratified three-tier ontology should refer to the 2026 version. Original AbstractReaders are advised to treat the present paper strictly as a historical record of the framework’s initial development. For the current, accurate formulation, please refer to the new publication.The measurement problem—why quantum superpositions yield definite outcomes upon observation—has persisted as the central interpretative challenge of quantum mechanics for nearly a century. This paper proposes that the problem dissolves when viewed through the joint lens of Kantian epistemology and predictive processing (Bayesian brain) theory. Drawing on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (experience) and noumena (reality-in-itself), we argue that the quantum wave function (Ψ) does not represent a physical field in the noumenal world, but rather the generative model of a prediction-generating cognitive agent. In this framework, "superposition" represents a state of uninitialized probabilistic expectation (Latent Space), while "collapse" is reinterpreted as a Bayesian belief update—the discrete transition from a probability distribution to a definite value, necessitated by the information-processing constraints of the observer. By treating the observer not as a passive witness but as an active inference engine, this framework: Naturalizes the collapse postulate: Measurement is the update of an internal model, not a physical discontinuity in nature. Resolves nested-observer paradoxes: Wigner's Friend is resolved by treating reality as a distributed system with eventual consistency, where distinct agents hold distinct local cache states. Grounds the Born Rule: We argue that the squared-amplitude probability rule (
P=∣Ψ∣2) serves as a transcendental constraint (akin to Gleason’s Theorem) required for the internal consistency of any probabilistic agent. This interpretation suggests that the "weirdness" of quantum mechanics reflects the necessary architectural constraints of any finite mind attempting to model an inaccessible reality, effectively treating physics as the "User Interface" of reality.
Quantum mechanics hosts a family of paradoxes—Wigner's friend, the black hole firewall, the Frauchiger-Renner paradox, and reference-frame dependence—that all arise from conflicts between different observers' descriptions of the same physical process. We propose a unified physical mechanism, the "Closed Room" model, that traces all these paradoxes to a single physical principle: the monogamy of entanglement enforces an information blockade between observers who have not shared a direct measurement interaction in the same basis. When an observer Alice performs a direct measurement on a system S, she enters a closed room defined by her entanglement with S. Any external observer Bob, who has not performed a direct measurement on S, is physically barred by monogamy from accessing the determinate facts inside the room. Bob's only consistent description is a superposition state. We verify this prediction using a 3-qubit quantum circuit on superconducting hardware: when Bob measures in the same basis as Alice, their outcomes exhibit perfect correlation (total correlation 86% in |000⟩ and |111⟩); when Bob measures in a different basis, his outcomes are uniformly random (each ≈25%). Collapse is reconceptualized not as an objective physical event but as a perspectival shift: when Bob himself enters the room by performing a direct measurement, he switches from indirect to direct observation and thereby joins the shared reality. The Closed Room model provides a conceptually minimal, experimentally testable framework that unifies the aforementioned paradoxes and establishes basis-matching as the operational condition for observer-dependent information sharing in quantum mechanics.
The general view is that all fundamental physical laws should be formulated within the framework given by quantum mechanics (QM). In a sense, QM therefore has the character of a metaphysical theory. Consequently, if it is possible to derive QM from more basic principles, these principles should be of general, philosophical nature. Here, we derive the formalism of QM from well-motivated epistemic principles. A key assumption is that a physical theory that relies on entities or distinctions that are unknowable in principle gives rise to wrong predictions. First, an epistemic formalism is developed, using concepts like knowledge and potential knowledge, identifying a physical state
S with the potential knowledge of the physical world. It is demonstrated that QM emerges from this formalism. However, Hilbert spaces, wave functions and probabilities are defined in certain well-defined observational contexts only. This means that the epistemic formalism is broader than QM. In the fundamental layer of description, the physical state
S is a subset of a state space
S={Z}, such that
S always contains many elements
Z. These elements correspond to unattainable states of complete knowledge of the world. The evolution of
S cannot be determined in terms of the individual evolution of the elements
Z, unlike the evolution of an ensemble in classical phase space. The evolution of
S is described in terms of sequential time
n∈N, which is updated according to
n→n+1 each time an event occurs, each time potential knowledge changes. Sequential time
n can be separated from relational time
t, which describes distances between events in space-time. There is an entire space-time associated with each
n, in which
t represents the knowledge at sequential time
n about the temporal relations between present and past events.
This article surveys a selection of key conceptual and interpretational developments in quantum mechanics, tracing the theory from its foundational postulates to contemporary discussions of measurement, nonlocality, and the emergence of classicality. Beginning with the structure of Hilbert space and the postulates governing state evolution and measurement, the epistemic stance of the Copenhagen interpretation and its modern reformulations are examined. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, Bell's theorem, and Hardy's paradox are then discussed as probes of locality and realism, alongside the deterministic but explicitly nonlocal de Broglie-Bohm theory. The measurement problem and the implications of contextuality are analyzed in relation to objective collapse models, which introduce new physical dynamics to account for definite outcomes. Finally, the role of decoherence in the suppression of interference and the emergence of classical behavior is explored, together with the interpretational frameworks of many-worlds and consistent histories. This material aims to provide a coherent introductory overview of how several of the most prominent interpretations address the central concern of what quantum mechanics tells us about the nature of physical reality.
Abstract Recent experiments (gedanken or otherwise) and theorems in quantum mechanics (QM) have led many people to claim that QM is not compatible with determinate and intersubjectively consistent experience, what some call the “absoluteness” of observed events; examples include new iterations on Wigner’s friend and delayed choice. Herein we provide a realist psi-epistemic take on QM that saves the absoluteness of observed events and the completeness of QM, without giving up free will or locality. We also show how our realist psi-epistemic account eliminates the measurement problem and, coupled with our take on neutral monism, also eliminates the hard problem of consciousness. On our view there is no need for conscious experience to explain measurement collapse nor any need for measurement collapse to resolve the hard problem. The key here is to reject the unquestioned assumptions that inexorably lead to the measurement problem and the hard problem. This will require a reconception of QM and, a reconception of matter, conscious experience and their relationship to one another.
According to quantum mechanics, the outcome of an experiment exists relative to an Experimenter who performs a measurement on the system under study. Witnessing the outcome of an experience requires the measurement on a physical system whose size must match the complexity of the Experimenter’s observation. We argue that such a physical system must have a certain space-time extension so that it can encode the rich and complex data embedded in the witnessed experience. The complementarity principle in quantum mechanics leads us to conjecture that the observable events constituting an experience have space-like separation with each other. This seems to be in contradiction with our perceived locality of physical laws, and encourages us to think that the act of measurement is not a physical process, in the sense that a measurement outcome witnessed by an Experimenter is not necessarily related to the physical description of the Experimenter observed from the outside.