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Van Fraassen and Ruetsche on Preparation and Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Bradley Monton
Bradley Monton*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
†Department of Philosophy, 1879 Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544–1006; e-mail: bjmonton@princeton.edu.
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Abstract

Ruetsche (1996) has argued that van Fraassen's (1991) Copenhagen Variant of the Modal Interpretation (CVMI) gives unsatisfactory accounts of measurement and of state preparation. I defend the CVMI against Ruetsche's first argument by using decoherence to show that the CVMI does not need to account for the measurement scenario which Ruetsche poses. I then show, however, that there is a problem concerning preparation, and the problem is more serious than the one Ruetsche focuses on. The CVMI makes no substantive predictions for the everyday processes we take to be measurements.

Type
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S82 - S91
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I thank Laura Ruetsche and Bas van Fraassen for helpful discussion. This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

References

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