Abstract
This is an essay on the interpretation of quantum theory. I take the central interpretive problem to be the problem of completeness. Partial assignments of values to the quantities are forced out by the 0 and 1 probabilities of the theory. Can we complete the assignments so as to assign values in superposed states? What is at stake is the very capacity of quantum theory to provide an intelligible picture of the world. Thus no ‘interpretation’ of the theory that fails to build in an affirmative answer to completeness can be acceptable. I explore here the program of hidden variables as a way of completing the theory and I assess the impact on that program of recent work on ‘locality’ by Bell and Wigner. Although I do not find that this work tells against hidden variables (just as I do not find it bearing on locality), I do wind up abandoning the hidden variable program for another one, one which does seem neatly to complete the theory.
Work on this essay was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant No. GS-3780. I want to thank the members of an informal discussion group on quantum mechanics that combined people from Chicago Circle and the University of Chicago and where some of the results here were first presented. Especially, I thank David Bantz, Phil Ehrlich, Neal Grossman, Roger Jones, Paul Teller, and Brian Skyrms. Their stubborn disbelief made me get things really straight, I think.
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Fine, A. (1976). On the Completeness of Quantum Theory. In: Suppes, P. (eds) Logic and Probability in Quantum Mechanics. Synthese Library, vol 78. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9466-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9466-5_13
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