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January 28, 2021

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Wavefunctions can Simultaneously Represent Knowledge and Reality

By Jonte R. Hance, John Rarity, James Ladyman.

Submitted to arXiv on 16 January 2021.

Harrigan and Spekkens give formal definitions for the wavefunction in quantum mechanics to be ψ-ontic or ψ-epistemic, such that the wavefunction can only be one or the other. We argue that nothing about the informal ideas of epistemic and ontic interpretations rules out wavefunctions representing both reality and knowledge. The implications of the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem and many other issues need to be rethought in the light of our analysis.

Read the whole paper here. 

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