QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

does an electron strike the screen in one position and not the other? Supporters of the hiddenoperator
theory are not satisfied by the explanation that randomness in nature is a fact. They
consider it more natural to assume that the question is only one of human ignorance. The wave
function does not provide a complete portrayal of an individual system because it does not
contain information which brings out the differences in hidden parameters. If the values of
variables were known, the behaviour of an individual particle would be exactly predictable and
quantum mechanics would revert to being a normal classical and deterministic theory in which
measurement would be no more of a problem that it has been earlier.
This hope raised by the hidden-variable interpretation was however dashed by measurements
carried out when Alain Aspect was testing Bell’s inequality. 659 According to these experiments,
local and realistic hidden-variable theories led to incorrect predictions. The presumption of
independent reality or locality must obviously be rejected. Usually, supporters of hidden-variable
theories prefer to abandon demands for locality and add to the world some mechanism for
influence at a distance, which allows a particle in one location to obtain instantaneous
information about a measurement being made on a particle in another location. Traditionally, this
influence at a distance has been taken to be an absurd and impossible form of faster-than-light
signalling. The abandonment of locality is not compatible with the theory of relativity. It also
signifies radical change in the aspiration to a classical physics world-view. Some researches have
suggested that in addition to locality, also separability, the idea that the identification of a system
does not require that it be ontologically limited to a specific location, could be abandoned. 660
In their desire to preserve the universe as completely deterministic and independent of human
influence, some supporters of hidden variables have been ready to propose that it is Superdeterministic,
i.e. that people carrying out experiments are unaware of the fact that the choices
they are making are actually predetermined. If free experimentation is rejected, the whole issue
of non-locality can be solved in many ways. The supporters of physical hidden variables
attempted to return to scientific determinism by postulating, for example, velocities greater than
that of the speed of light and particles that move backwards through time 661 , while for their part,
659
Aspect 1982. Bell 1964. Presumably, Bohm’s clear hidden-variable interpretation (1952) which was non-local
inspired Bell to think more carefully about these questions, even though the Copenhagen interpretation already
stressed the indivisible and holistic features within quantum mechanics.
660
Folse and Howard 1987 in Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory, Reflections on Bell´s Theorem. Ed
by J.T. Cushing and E. McMullin.
661
For example, John Bell has supported the idea about a coordinator or ether through which something can move
faster than light. Davies and Brown 1989, 55-58.
243