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What is "orthodox quantum mechanics"?

David Wallace ( University of Oxford )

Workers in quantum foundations often speak of the "orthodox" interpretation of quantum mechanics, by which they mean something like the Schrodinger dynamics supplemented with the eigenvector-eigenvalue link and the Dirac-von Neumann projection postulate.  But if "orthodox" means "standard amongst physicists" then the orthodox interpretation is not orthodox at all: orthodoxy is something much more minimal, from which the stronger notion is obtained by adding substantive metaphysical assumptions and by trying to clear up conceptual confusion in the physicists' approach. Since virtually no-one actually thinks the (stronger) "orthodox interpretation" is any good as an interpretation of quantum mechanics, it might be better to take the more minimal physics version as a starting point from which to formulate the measurement problem.

 

 

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