It has been shown by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen that in quantum mechanics one of two different wave functions predicting specific values for quantities represented by non-commuting Hermitian operators can characterize the same physical system, without a physical interaction responsible for which wave function is realized in a measurement. This result means that one can make predictions regarding mutually exclusive features of a physical system. It is important to ask whether people can make observations of mutually exclusive phenomena. Our everyday experience informs us that a human observer is capable of observing one set of physical circumstances at a time. Evidence from psychology, though, indicates that people may have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive physical phenomena, even though this capacity in not generally recognized. Working independently, Sigmund Freud and William James provided some of this evidence. How the nature of the quantum mechanical wave function is associated with the problem posed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is addressed at the end of the paper.
It has been shown by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen that in quantum mechanics one of two different wave functions predicting specific values for quantities represented by non-commuting Hermitian operators can characterize the same physical system, without a physical interaction responsible for which wave function is realized in a measurement. This result means that one can make predictions regarding mutually exclusive features of a physical system. It is important to ask whether people can make observations of mutually exclusive phenomena. Our everyday experience informs us that a human observer is capable of observing one set of physical circumstances at a time. Evidence from psychology, though, indicates that people may have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive physical phenomena, even though this capacity in not generally recognized. Working independently, Sigmund Freud and William James provided some of this evidence. How the nature of the quantum mechanical wave function is associated with the problem posed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is addressed at the end of the paper.
It has been shown by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen that in quantum mechanics either one of two different wave functions predicting specific values for quantities represented by non-commuting Hermitian operators can characterize the same physical existent, without a physical interaction responsible for which wave function occurs. This result means that one can make predictions regarding mutually exclusive features of a physical existent. It is important to ask whether people have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive phenomena. Our everyday experience informs us that a human observer is capable of observing only one set of physical circumstances at a time. Evidence from psychology, though, indicates that people may have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive physical phenomena, even though this capacity is not generally recognized. Working independently, Sigmund Freud and William James provided some of this evidence. How the nature of the quantum mechanical wave function is associated with the problem posed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is addressed at the end of the paper.
A straightforward explanation of fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics concerning the wave function results in the thesis that the quantum mechanical wave function is a link between human cognition and the physical world. The reticence on the part of physicists to adopt this thesis is discussed. A comparison is made to the behaviorists’ consideration of mind, and the historical roots of how the problem concerning the quantum mechanical wave function arose are discussed. The basis for an empirical demonstration that the wave function is a link between human cognition and the physical world is provided through developing an experiment using methodology from psychology and physics. Based on research in psychology and physics that relied on this methodology, it is likely that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen’s theoretical result that mutually exclusive wave functions can simultaneously apply to the same concrete physical circumstances can be implemented on an empirical level. Original article in The Journal of Mind and Behavior is on JSTOR at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43853678.pdf?seq=1 . Preprint on CERN preprint server at https://cds.cern.ch/record/569426 .
Over fifty years ago Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen published a striking argument that quantum theory provides only an incomplete description of physical reality – that is, that some elements of physical reality fail to have a counterpart in quantum-theoretical description. What made this a challenge to the quantum-theoretical Weltanschauung was the very mild character of the sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity on which their argument hinged: “If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this physical quantity.” The argument consists in pointing out that it is possible to construct a quantum-mechanical state ψ with the following properties: The state ψ describes two noninteracting systems (I and II). In almost all discussions the two systems are taken to be two particles, and the absence of relevant interaction is built in by taking ψ to assign negligible probability to finding the particles closer together than some macroscopically large distance. By measuring an observable A of system I, one can predict with certainty the result of a subsequent measurement of a corresponding observable P of system II. If, instead, one chooses to measure a different observable B of system I, one can predict with certainty the result of a subsequent measurement of a corresponding observable Q of system II. The observables P and Q are represented in quantum theory by noncommuting operators, which means that they cannot both have definite values.
Abstract: The standard formulation of Quantum Mechanics has raised from its beginning animated discussions about the interpretation of the counterintuitive properties of mental objects (wave functions or Schrödinger waves) introduced to represent the properties of the physical objects.Two questions have since then been formulated to which a universally accepted answer is still lacking. The first one (Bohr, von Neumann) concerns the ontological nature of physical reality (the existence of classical objects) and the role of the observer (wave packet collapse) in assessing it. The second one is the non local character of quantum physical quantities (Einstein Podolski Rosen [EPR] long distance correlation of particles). An alternative formulation of Quantum Mechanics, originally proposed in 1932 by Eugene Wigner, taken up by Richard Feynman in 1987, and reelaborated by myself in the years from 1998 to 2003, is possible. The mental objects of standard Quantum Mechanics (Schrödinger waves) no longer appear in this new formulation and are replaced by new ones (Wigner functions) which do not show any more the puzzling properties which worried Einstein. My conclusion from the preceding discussion is that different explanations of a given set of experimental data may be derived according to the different nature of the mental objects introduced to represent the properties of the physical objects involved. The confusion between these two kind of objects may be, however, very misleading. I will finally discuss two examples of this conclusion from Biology
In classical mechanics, as we know, all observables commute with each other and therefore belong to the same “commuting set.” This means that – in principle – we can measure all observables simultaneously. Then, the state manifests itself as a collection of properties (of values of observables) (see Sec. 1.1), and as such it is observable. On the other hand, quantum-mechanical observables may not commute (see Subsec. 2.1.5). As a consequence, the state is not just a collection of observable values (see also Sec. 2.3) so that we may ask ourselves whether it is observable or not, and therefore raise the following question: What is the nature of the wave function? Is it simply a mathematical tool, i.e. does it only represent the sum of all that we can know about a system? Or does it have an ontological status? Since the early days of quantum mechanics, this question has been very popular. As a first attempt, de Broglie tried to interpret the wave function as describing, in classical terms, a wave field that envelopes a classical particle (see also Subsec. 16.3.2). This theory should predict the existence of empty waves, but several experiments have shown negative results (see also the end of Sec. 9.6). More recently, many physicists have tried to propose some methods in order to measure the wave function. Here we shortly report on some of these proposals and discuss to what extent the quantum state can be measured.
All quantum physical phenomena are maximally closed. Thus, if a photon emitted by a source later is registered in a detector, it is not meaningful “to try to find out what might have happened to the photon on its travel from source to detector.” To find out means to make an experiment. Hence, if a new detector is placed somewhere on the photon route, one has a new phenomenon. In a double-slit experiment the wave interference disappears if one tries to determine which way the particle went. Such mutually exclusive (complementary) particle and wave experiments, represent in the words of Bohr [27], “a rational generalization of classical physics.” To obtain human knowledge of the photon we must make observations.