On the Status of Primitive Ontology

Abstract

Spontaneous collapse theories provide a promising solution to the measurement problem. But they also introduce a number of problems of their own concerning dimensionality, vagueness, and locality. In response to these problems, advocates of collapse theories have proposed various accounts of the primitive ontology of collapse theories—postulated underlying entities governed by the collapse theory and underwriting our observations. The most prominent of these are a mass density distribution over three-dimensional space, and a set of discrete “flash” events at space-time points. My argument here is that these primitive ontologies are redundant, in the sense that the structures exhibited by the primitive ontologies that allow them to solve the problems facing spontaneous collapse theories are also present in the wave function. But redundancy is not nonexistence; indeed, the fact that the relevant structures are already there in the wave function shows that the mass density ontology and the flash ontology exist whether they are explicitly postulated or not. By the same token, there is no need to decide between a wave function ontology, a mass density ontology and a flash ontology.

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Peter J. Lewis
Dartmouth College

Citations of this work

Ontology for Collapse Theories.Wayne C. Myrvold - 2017 - In Shan Gao (ed.), Collapse of the Wave Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quantum mechanics, time and ontology.Valia Allori - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 66 (C):145-154.

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References found in this work

Ontology Made Easy.Amie Lynn Thomasson - 2014 - New York: Oup Usa.
Elementary Quantum Metaphysics.David Albert - 1996 - In J. T. Cushing, Arthur Fine & Sheldon Goldstein (eds.), Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum theory: An Appraisal. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 277-284.

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