Philosophical lessons of entanglement

TL;DR

This paper explores the philosophical implications of quantum entanglement, emphasizing the need for new concepts of truth, probability, and perspective to understand quantum phenomena and their relation to human observers.

Contribution

It introduces a perspective-based framework that reconciles contradictory statements in quantum mechanics using multi-valued logic and distinguishes internal and external viewpoints.

Findings

Probability is an objective aspect of internal perspectives.

Future-tense statements in quantum mechanics are inherently probabilistic.

Different perspectives resolve apparent contradictions in quantum descriptions.

Abstract

The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern scientific thought. There are two kinds of statements about the world: those made from inside the world, and those from outside. The conflict between contradictory statements which both appear to be true can be resolved by recognising that they are made in different perspectives. Probability, in an objective sense, belongs in the internal perspective, and to statements in the future tense. Such statements obey a many-valued logic, in which the truth values are identified as probabilities.