Open questions

Abstract

The interactive interpretation I have presented here leaves many interesting questions unresolved. In conclusion, I shall raise several such questions, and discuss their significance for the interpretation. These may be divided roughly into two kinds: Some are merely requests for a more complete development of the view expressed here, whereas others represent unresolved challenges to its adequacy as an interpretation of quantum mechanics. What these questions all have in common is that at the present time I cannot myself adequately answer them. I raise the questions here to commend them to others, as suggesting interesting topics for further research of a kind that holds out hope for an improved understanding of the quantum world, as well as of our current best theories of it. The first such question concerns the dynamics of quantum systems during interactions. The present interactive interpretation rests on certain rather weak assumptions about how the dynamical state of a quantum system changes during an interaction: It would clearly be of great interest to explore further details of this process. Such an exploration requires both theoretical and experimental research. If the present interpretation of quantum mechanics is along the right lines, then not only does a quantum system have a well-defined dynamical state at each moment, but also there is an interesting stochastic element to the evolution of that dynamical state during an interaction. Although the present interpretation constrains this stochastic behavior, it neither specifies nor determines it.