Realism about the wave function

Realism and the wave function

Realism – the idea that the concepts in physical theories refer to ’things’ existing in the real world – is introduced as a tool to analyze the status of the wavefunction. Although the physical entities are recognized by the existence of invariant quantities, examples from classical and quantum physics suggest that not all the theoretical terms refer to the entities: some terms refer to propert...

Naive Realism about Operators

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a “naive realism about operators.” By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about “measuring operators” that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by “mea...

Realism about Behavior

Behavior analysis emphasizes the study of overt animal (human and nonhuman) behavior as a subject matter in its own right. This paper provides a metaphysical foundation for such an emphasis via an elucidation of a thesis that I generically call “realism about behavior,” where by “realism” I mean an assertion of mindindependent existence. The elucidation takes the form of a conceptual framework ...

Some Realism About Empiricism

The sad truth about depressive realism.

In one form of a contingency judgement task individuals must judge the relationship between an action and an outcome. There are reports that depressed individuals are more accurate than are non-depressed individuals in this task. In particular, nondepressed individuals are influenced by manipulations that affect the salience of the outcome, especially outcome probability. They overestimate a co...