The Emergence and Interpretation of Probability in Bohmian Mechanics

The Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics is capable of illustrating, by itself, virtually every philosophical and foundational conundrum associated with physical probability. One reason this is true is that the Bohm interpretation comes in many forms, both stochastic and deterministic. The other reason is that quantum mechanics is to Bohmian mechanics roughly as statistical mechanics is to classical mechanics; hence the notorious problems in the foundations of statistical mechanics are reprised within the foundations of Bohmian mechanics. The present paper is an opinionated survey of this literature. In it I focus on the meaning of Born’s rule in a Bohmian universe. After considering various rationales for this rule, I settle on one based on the law of large numbers as the best bet. This option leaves open how the probabilities in this result ought to be interpreted, or so I shall argue. When delivering an interpretation of these probabilities, the history of probability warns us of a number of pitfalls. I show how these pitfalls manifest themselves in the Bohmian case and then show that at least one class of interpretations seems to successfully navigate these problems.