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Empirical Adequacy and the Availability of Reliable Records in Quantum Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffrey A. Barrett
Jeffrey A. Barrett*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of California, Irvine
*
‡Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92717.
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Abstract

In order to judge whether a theory is empirically adequate one must have epistemic access to reliable records of past measurement results that can be compared against the predictions of the theory. Some formulations of quantum mechanics fail to satisfy this condition. The standard theory without the collapse postulate is an example. Bell's reading of Everett's relative-state formulation is another. Furthermore, there are formulations of quantum mechanics that only satisfy this condition for a special class of observers, formulations whose empirical adequacy could only be judged by an observer who records her measurement results in a special way. Bohm's theory is an example. It is possible to formulate hidden-variable theories that do not suffer from such a restriction, but these encounter other problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 49 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Jeffrey Bub and Jeoron Vink for discussions concerning Bohm's theory and how it might be extended and the Kochen-Specker theorem. I would also like to thank Barry Loewer, David Albert, Rob Clifton, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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