It's a Matter of Principle: Scientific Explanation in Information-Theoretic Reconstructions of Quantum Theory

Felline, Laura

doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12160

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…ref. []) and has been echoed in various ways since, as will be shown further below. (The partial reconstructive approach—the reconstruction of quantum theory beginning with simple fundamental principles that are known to capture most, though not all of it so as to assist in the discovery of other, remaining simple principles allowing for a possible later complete reconstruction—is discussed below, after a review of early attempts at reconstructing quantum mechanics itself.…”

Section: Information and Physicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The partially reconstructive treatments aim to identify how much of the theory can be traced back to basic principles, such as nonlocal correlation and causality, so as to assist in identifying what remains to be added to achieve a full reconstruction and/or an alternative theory or theories that may be similar yet not identical to quantum mechanics, under a broader conceptual umbrella . Like attempted full reconstructions, these could eventually allow ontologies to be contemplated that might differ from the traditional material, wave/particle conceptions, and even more so.…”

Section: Early Isolation Of Quantum Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Information and the Reconstruction of Quantum Physics

Jaeger

2018

Annalen der Physik

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The reconstruction of quantum physics has been connected with the interpretation of the quantum formalism, and has continued to be so with the recent deeper consideration of the relation of information to quantum states and processes. This recent form of reconstruction has mainly involved conceiving quantum theory on the basis of informational principles, providing new perspectives on physical correlations and entanglement that can be used to encode information. By contrast to the traditional, interpretational approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics, which attempts directly to establish the meaning of the elements of the theory and often touches on metaphysical issues, the newer, more purely reconstructive approach sometimes defers this task, focusing instead on the mathematical derivation of the theoretical apparatus from simple principles or axioms. In its most pure form, this sort of theory reconstruction is fundamentally the mathematical derivation of the elements of theory from explicitly presented, often operational principles involving a minimum of extra-mathematical content. Here, a representative series of specifically information-based treatments-from partial reconstructions that make connections with information to rigorous axiomatizations, including those involving the theories of generalized probability and abstract systems-is reviewed.The most basic physical principle of quantum mechanics is that of state superposition: Any sum of physical state vectors is also a physical state, with these states lying in a Hilbert space or related mathematical structure; cf., for example, ref.[1]. The standard view recently has been that superposition lends striking features to quantum informationthat is, information encoded entirely via quantum systems-that are not found in its classical counterpart, that is, information encoded in classical mechanical states. The most striking of the features of the quantum state itself are those associated with entanglement, which arises with the interaction or joint appearance of systems via another basic quantum physical rule, that which assigns the tensor-product space of the linear spaces of the subsystems composing a larger system; as its consequence, quantum signal-state correlations are possible that are stronger than those between classical states-these correlations being often called "nonlocal" because they violate Bell-type inequalities and enable communication and information processing tasks to be accomplished that either cannot be done as efficiently or cannot be done at all using only classical mechanical signals; cf., for example, ref. [2].That nonclassical phenomena involving correlation can arise when quantum systems are entangled was evident early in the history of quantum mechanics to Albert Einstein [3] and to Erwin Schrödinger, [4,5] who named entanglement, even before the explorations of David Bohm, [6] John S. Bell, [7] Abner Shimony, [1] and others, for whom the understanding of nonlocal correlations was a great pursuit and who devised the first ...

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Section: Information and Physicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Early Isolation Of Quantum Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information and the Reconstruction of Quantum Physics

Jaeger

2018

Annalen der Physik

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“…The information gain that Bob can reach about a previously unknown to him data set of Alice, by using all his local resources and m classical bits communicated by Alice, is at most m bits (Pawłowski et al 2009(Pawłowski et al , p. 1101). 6 Felline (2016), argues that axiomatic reconstructions of QT provide a concrete and quite commonsensical explanation, which explains a feature of the quantum world by showing how this feature depends on what might pre-theoretically be called 'nature' of the quantum world. In this account, however, the notion of 'nature' is replaced with that of characterizing property, i.e.…”

Section: Qt As a Principle Theory About Information Explains Somethinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum theory is not only about information

Felline

2020

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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In his recent book Bananaworld. Quantum mechanics for primates, Jeff Bub revives and provides a mature version of his influential information-theoretic interpretation of Quantum Theory (QT). In this paper, I test Bub's conjecture that QT should be interpreted as a theory about information, by examining whether his information-theoretic interpretation has the resources to explain (or explain away) quantum conundrums. The discussion of Bub's theses will also serve to investigate, more in general, whether other approaches succeed in defending the claim that QT is about quantum information. First of all, I argue that Bub's interpretation of QT as a principle theory fails to fully explain quantum non-locality. Secondly, I argue that a constructive interpretation, where the quantum state is interpreted ontically as information, also fails at providing a full explanation of quantum correlations. Finally, while epistemic interpretations might succeed in this respect, I argue that such a success comes at the price of rejecting some in between the most basic scientific standards of physical theories.

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“…For a discussion of both Clifton et al's and Spekkens' results, and of the project in general, seeMyrvold (2010); and see alsoFelline (2016).…”

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confidence: 99%