Talk by Tom Pashby at MCMP (Thu. 11. July)

[Dardashti, Radin]

Speaker: Tom Pashby (Pittsburgh)
Wednesday 11th July 2013
Ludwigstr.31 Room E021
Time: 6 to 8 pm

Title: Letting Things Happen: Quantum Mechanics as a Theory of Events

Abstract:
In this paper I argue for two controversial claims.  The first is that 
Ordinary Quantum Mechanics, which represents observables by self-adjoint 
operators on a Hilbert space and propositions by projections, is 
inadequate for the description of many experimental setups involving 
non-instantaneous measurements.  Ordinary QM thus fails to be 
empirically adequate.  The second claim is that quantum mechanics, 
properly understood, is not a theory of wavefunctions and their 
dynamical evolution but of conditional probabilities for the occurrence 
of events at particular times.  Moreover, I argue that the second claim 
follows from addressing the first.  That is, I claim that in order to 
accommodate experiments of the type that Ordinary QM fails to describe 
one is led towards the view that quantum mechanics concerns the 
occurrence of physical events rather than the dynamical evolution of a 
material object.  There are two steps in the progression.  First, I 
advocate the use of so-called event time or time of occurrence 
observables, which do not correspond to self-adjoint operators.  Second, 
to accommodate multi-case conditionalisation I advocate the use of the 
Extended Schroedinger Equation, which applies to functions of time and 
space rather than of space alone and so is not a dynamical equation for 
a spatial wavefunction.