On the plurality of quantum theories: Quantum theory as a framework and its implications for the quantum measurement problem

In Steven French & Juha Saatsi (eds.), Scientific Realism and the Quantum. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020)
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Abstract

`Quantum theory' is not a single physical theory but a framework in which many different concrete theories fit. As such, a solution to the quantum measurement problem ought to provide a recipe to interpret each such concrete theory, in a mutually consistent way. But with the exception of the Everett interpretation, the mainextant solutions either try to make sense of the abstract framework as if it were concrete, or else interpret one particular quantum theory under the fiction that it is fundamental and exact. In either case, these approaches are unable to help themselves to the very theory-laden, level-relative ways in which quantum theory makes contact with experiment in mainstream physics, and so are committed to major revisionary projects which have not been carried out even in outline. As such, only the Everett interpretation is currently suited to make sense of quantum physics as we find it.

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David Wallace
University of Pittsburgh

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How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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