Assessing the Montevideo Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Jeremy Butterfield

doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2014.04.001

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arXiv · 1406.4351

Assessing the Montevideo Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Jeremy Butterfield

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Abstract

This paper gives a philosophical assessment of the Montevideo interpretation of quantum theory, advocated by Gambini, Pullin and co-authors. This interpretation has the merit of linking its proposal about how to solve the measurement problem to the search for quantum gravity: namely by suggesting that quantum gravity makes for fundamental limitations on the accuracy of clocks, which imply a type of decoherence that "collapses the wave-packet". I begin (Section 2) by sketching the topics of decoherence, and quantum clocks, on which the interpretation depends. Then I expound the interpretation, from a philosopher's perspective (Sections 3, 4 and 5). Finally, in Section 6, I argue that the interpretation, at least as developed so far, is best seen as a form of the Everett interpretation: namely with an effective or approximate branching, that is induced by environmental decoherence of the familiar kind, and by the Montevideans' "temporal decoherence".

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Jeremy Butterfield. 2014-06-17. Assessing the Montevideo Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2014.04.001

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