Abstract
The quantum logical and quantum information-theoretic traditions have exerted an especially powerful influence on Bub’s thinking about the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. This paper discusses both the quantum logical and information-theoretic traditions from the point of view of their representational frameworks. I argue that it is at this level—at the level of its framework—that the quantum logical tradition has retained its centrality to Bub’s thought. It is further argued that there is implicit in the quantum information-theoretic tradition a set of ideas that mark a genuinely new alternative to the framework of quantum logic. These ideas are of considerable interest for the philosophy of quantum mechanics, a claim which I defend with an extended discussion of their application to our understanding of the philosophical significance of the no hidden variable theorem of Kochen and Specker.
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I have been influenced in more ways than I have been able to record in the text by my friends and colleagues, Jeffrey Bub, Itamar Pitowsky, Robert Di Salle, and most recently, Christopher A. Fuchs, My thanks to them for many hours of conversation and many pages of correspondence. My research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Killam Foundation.
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Demopoulos, W. Effects and Propositions. Found Phys 40, 368–389 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-009-9321-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-009-9321-x