How to Complete Quantum Mechanics, Or, What It’s Like To Be a Naturally Creative Bohmian Beable

Faramarz Rahmani

Robert Hanna

In another essay, I’ve argued by means of a formal analogy between (i) the incompleteness of Principia Mathematica-style systems of mathematical logic (logico-mathematical incompleteness) and (ii) the incompleteness of the Standard Models in contemporary physics (physico-mechanical incompleteness), that (iii) just as the fact of logico-mathematical incompleteness entails the existence of mathematical creativity, so too the fact of physico-mechanical incompleteness entails the existence of natural creativity. Building on that line of thought, in this essay I present a new and empirically-testable strategy for completing quantum mechanics. More precisely, I argue that if we assume that the Standard Models in contemporary physics are incomplete, and if we also assume that all rational human animals are primitive sources of natural creativity via their free agency, then, by means of an appeal to Bohmian mechanics, together with the thesis that all rational human animals are primitive sources of natural creativity via their free agency, we can complete quantum mechanics.

Florian J. Boge

Arnold Neumaier

It is shown that, for a harmonic oscillator in the ground state, Bohmian mechanics and quantum mechanics predict values of opposite sign for certain time correlations. The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that Bohmian mechanics has no natural way to accomodate the Heisenberg picture, since the local expectation values that define the beables of the theory depend on the Heisenberg time being used to define the operators. Relations to measurement are discussed, too, and shown to leave no loophole for claiming that Bohmian mechanics reproduces all predictions of quantum mechanics exactly.

Hrvoje Nikolić

The many-fingered time (MFT) formulation of many-particle quantum mechanics and quantum field theory is a natural framework that overcomes the problem of "instantaneous collapse" in entangled systems that exhibit nonlocalities. The corresponding Bohmian interpretation can also be formulated in terms of MFT beables, which alleviates the problem of instantaneous action at a distance by using an ontology that differs from that in the standard Bohmian interpretation. The appearance of usual single-time particle-positions and fields is recovered by quantum measurements.

Michael Anderson