•  38
    Preface
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (4): 705-708. 2008.
  •  9
    Physics and Beyond: Essay review of Kay Herrmann (Ed.): Grete Henry - Hermann: Philosophie – Mathematik – Quantenmechanik. Springer: Wiesbaden 2019, xv + 663 pp (review)
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (4): 595-610. 2020.
    Using the volume of her works and correspondence recently edited by K. Herrmann, I assess the significance of Grete Hermann's work.
  •  12
    Translation of Three Short Papers by Grete Hermann
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (4): 615-619. 2020.
  •  12
    Quantum mechanics, emergence, and decisions
    Mind and Society 19 (2): 299-305. 2020.
    I summarise some aspects of the relation between quantum mechanics and the macroscopic world in the context of the multiverse or Everett theory. I do so with particular reference to the results of the theory of decoherence, the notions of reduction and emergence, and agents' decisions.
  •  5
    Bohr’s Slit and Hermann’s Microscope
    In Elise Crull & Guido Bacciagaluppi (eds.), Grete Hermann - Between Physics and Philosophy, Springer. 2016.
    The Heisenberg microscope and its analysis by Weizsäcker are used by Grete Hermann in her 1935 essay on the foundations of quantum mechanics to argue her claims about causality in quantum mechanics. In this chapter, I wish to draw a comparison between Hermann’s use of the Heisenberg microscope and another famous use of a very similar thought experiment : Bohr’s analysis of the suspended single slit in his reply to EPR. I shall argue that Hermann’s use of different aspects of the classical pictur…Read more
  •  60
    The 1927 Solvay conference was perhaps the most important meeting in the history of quantum theory. Contrary to popular belief, the interpretation of quantum theory was not settled at this conference, and no consensus was reached. Instead, a range of sharply conflicting views were presented and extensively discussed, including de Broglie's pilot-wave theory, Born and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and Schrödinger's wave mechanics. Today, there is no longer an established or dominant interpretat…Read more
  •  41
    This is the first of two papers reviewing and analysing the approach to locality and to mind-body dualism proposed in Everett interpreta- tions of quantum mechanics. The planned companion paper will focus on the contemporary decoherence-based approaches to Everett. This paper instead treats the explicitly mentalistic Many Minds Interpreta- tion proposed by David Albert and Barry Loewer (Albert and Loewer 1988). In particular, we investigate what kind of supervenience of the mind on the body is i…Read more
  •  68
    The publication of the EPR paper in 1935 prompted Heisenberg to draft a manuscript on the question of the completability of quantum mechanics. We give here the English translation of this manuscript with a brief introduction and bibliography.
  •  49
    This is an Essay Review of "Many Worlds? Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality", edited by Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent, and David Wallace. A much shortened version of this review is appearing in "Metascience" under the title "The Many Facets of Everett’s Many Worlds".
  •  1
    The role of decoherence in quantum theory
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. forthcoming.
  •  48
    A concrete procedure for obtaining sharp reconstructions of unsharp observables in finite-dimensional quantum mechanics
    with Gianpiero Cattaneo, Tiziana Marsico, and Giuseppe Nisticò
    Foundations of Physics 27 (10): 1323-1343. 1997.
    We discuss the problem of how a (commutative) generalized observable in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space (communtative effect-valued resolution of the identity) can be considered as an unsharp realization of some standard observable (projection-valued resolution of the identity). In particular, we give a concrete procedure for constructing such a standard observable. Some results about the “uniqueness” of the resulting observable are also examined
  •  111
    The role of decoherence in quantum mechanics
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003.
    Interference phenomena are a well-known and crucial feature of quantum mechanics, the two-slit experiment providing a standard example. There are situations, however, in which interference effects are (artificially or spontaneously) suppressed. We shall need to make precise what this means, but the theory of decoherence is the study of (spontaneous) interactions between a system and its environment that lead to such suppression of interference. This study includes detailed modelling of system-en…Read more
  •  28
    This is a review of Barrett and Byrne's commented edition of Everett's collected works, originally published in HOPOS 3, 348-352, but here including footnotes and references.
  •  61
    The topic of probabilty in quantum mechanics is rather vast, and in this article, we shall choose to discuss it from the perspective of whether and in what sense quantum mechanics requires a generalisation of the usual concept of probability. We shall focus on the case of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics, partly for simplicity and partly for ease of generalisation. While we shall largely focus on formal aspects of quantum probability, our discussion will relate also to notorious issues in th…Read more
  •  104
    Remarks on Space-time and Locality in Everett's Interpretation
    In T. Placek & J. Butterfield (eds.), Non-Locality and Modality, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 105--122. 2001.
    Interpretations that follow Everett's idea that the universal wave function contains a multiplicity of coexisting realities, usually claim to give a completely local account of quantum mechanics. That is, they claim to give an account that avoids both a non-local collapse of the wave function, and the action at a distance needed in hidden variable theories in order to reproduce the quantum mechanical violation of the Bell inequalities. In this paper, I sketch how these claims can be substantiate…Read more
  •  17
    Probability, arrow of time and decoherence
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2): 439-456. 2007.
    This paper relates both to the metaphysics of probability and to the physics of time asymmetry. Using the formalism of decoherent histories, it investigates whether intuitions about intrinsic time directedness that are often associated with probability can be justified in the context of no-collapse approaches to quantum mechanics. The standard approach to time symmetry in the decoherent histories literature is criticised, and an alternative approach is proposed, based on two decoherence conditio…Read more
  •  228
    Probability, arrow of time and decoherence
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2): 439-456. 2006.
    This paper relates both to the metaphysics of probability and to the physics of time asymmetry. Using the formalism of decoherent histories, it investigates whether intuitions about intrinsic time directedness that are often associated with probability can be justified in the context of no-collapse approaches to quantum mechanics. The standard approach to time symmetry in the decoherent histories literature is criticised, and an alternative approach is proposed, based on two decoherence conditio…Read more
  •  69
    Definitions of time symmetry and examples of time-directed behaviour are discussed in the framework of discrete Markov processes. It is argued that typical examples of time-directed behaviour can be described using time-symmetric transition probabilities. Some current arguments in favour of a distinction between past and future on the basis of probabilistic considerations are thereby judged to be unjustified.
  •  16
    The notion of non-equilibrium, in the sense of a particle distribution other than rho equal psi squared, is imported into Nelson’s stochastic mechanics, and described in terms of effective wavefunctions obeying non-linear equations. These techniques are applied to the discussion of non-locality in non-linear Schroedinger equations.
  •  80
    Modal interpretations, decoherence and measurements
    with Meir Hemmo
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27 (3): 239-277. 1996.
  •  25
    Modal interpretations, decoherence and measurements
    with Meir Hemmo
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27 (3): 239-277. 1996.
  •  54
    Making Sense of Approximate Decoherence
    with Meir Hemmo
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.
    In realistic situations where a macroscopic system interacts with an external environment, decoherence of the quantum state, as derived in the decoherence approach, is only approximate. We argue that this can still give rise to facts, provided that during the decoherence process states that are, respectively, always close to eigenvectors of pointer position and record observable are correlated. We show in a model that this is always the case.
  •  30
    Jordan's derivation of blackbody fluctuations
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 60 23-34. 2017.
    The celebrated Dreimännerarbeit by Born, Heisenberg and Jordan contains a matrix-mechanical derivation by Jordan of Planck’s formula for blackbody fluctuations. Jordan appears to have considered this to be one of his finest contributions to quantum theory, but the status of his derivation is puzzling. In our Dreimenschenarbeit, we show how to understand what Jordan was doing in the double context of a Boltzmannian approach to statistical mechanics and of the early ‘statistical interpretation’ of…Read more
  •  27
    This article focuses on two of the main problems raising interpretational issues in quantum mechanics, namely the notorious measurement problem and the equally important but not quite as widely discussed problem of the classical regime. The two problems are distinct, but they are both intimately related to some of the issues arising from entanglement and density operators. The article aims to be fairly non-technical in language, but modern in outlook and covering the chosen topics in more depth …Read more
  •  143
    Heisenberg (and Schrödinger, and Pauli) on hidden variables
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (4): 374-382. 2009.
    In this paper, we discuss various aspects of Heisenberg’s thought on hidden variables in the period 1927–1935. We also compare Heisenberg’s approach to others current at the time, specifically that embodied by von Neumann’s impossibility proof, but also views expressed mainly in correspondence by Pauli and by Schroedinger. We shall base ourselves mostly on published and unpublished materials that are known but little-studied, among others Heisenberg’s own draft response to the EPR paper. Our aim…Read more
  •  181
    Insolubility Theorems and EPR Argument
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 87-100. 2013.
    I present a very general and simple argument—based on the no-signalling theorem—showing that within the framework of the unitary Schrödinger equation it is impossible to reproduce the phenomenological description of quantum mechanical measurements (in particular the collapse of the state of the measured system) by assuming a suitable mixed initial state of the apparatus. The thrust of the argument is thus similar to that of the ‘insolubility theorems’ for the measurement problem of quantum mecha…Read more