Oldofredi, Andrea and Vassallo, Antonio (2025) Too Many Perspectives, Not World Enough: A Metaphysical Appraisal of Relational Quantum Mechanics. [Preprint]
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Abstract
This paper examines the metaphysical foundations of Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM), with special attention to its compatibility with scientific realism. We argue that RQM faces a dilemma. In its original formulation, RQM secures a sparse ontology of relative quantum events, but lacks the world-building structure needed to explain how these events jointly constitute a single, coherent reality of the kind presupposed by scientific realism. Recent discussions have already emphasized the difficulties that RQM faces concerning intersubjective agreement, communication, and the emergence of stable facts. Our contribution is to diagnose these difficulties as symptoms of a deeper metaphysical problem: RQM provides relative facts, but no clear account of what makes them facts of one world. We then assess the revised formulation proposed by Adlam and Rovelli, centered on the Cross-Perspective Links (CPL) principle. While CPL aims to restore intersubjective agreement by guaranteeing consistency across perspectives, we argue that it does so at a significant cost. It introduces observer-independent facts, persistent information-bearing structures, and global consistency constraints that sit uneasily with the relational spirit of the original interpretation. Thus, RQM either remains thoroughly relational but metaphysically too weak to support robust scientific realism, or it repairs this weakness by compromising its own relational foundations.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Keywords: | Relational quantum mechanics; relative facts; scientific realism; world-building relation; cross-perspective links. | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
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| Depositing User: | Antonio Vassallo | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jun 2026 11:37 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2026 11:37 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 30014 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
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| Date: | 2025 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/30014 |
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