Mason, Lucy
(2025)
Perspectives on the Quantum State.
[Preprint]
Abstract
There are two main styles of interpreting the quantum state: either focusing on the fundamentality of the quantum state (a wavefunction or state realist view), or on how projection operators represent observable properties (an observable-first approach). Rather than being incompatible, I argue that these correspond to taking a 3rd person and 1st person perspective respectively. I further contend that the 1st person perspective - and the observable-first approach that goes with it - is better suited to explain measurement, based on the way that the metrology literature, as well as the work of Bohr, characterises measurement through the properties of a system. Finally, I show how the 1st person, observable-first approach can emerge in the world through the process of decoherence, hence showing the compatibility of the two approaches and resolving the need to choose absolutely between them.
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