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The Trouble with Superselection Accounts of Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Mariam Thalos
Mariam Thalos*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo, 607 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14620-1010; e-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

A superselection rule advanced in the course of a quantum-mechanical treatment of some phenomenon is an assertion to the effect that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics is to be restricted in the application at hand. Superselection accounts of measurement all have in common a decision to represent the indicator states of detectors by eigenspaces of superselection operators named in a superselection rule, on the grounds that the states in question are states of a so-called classical quantity and therefore not subject to quantum interference effects. By this strategy superselectionists of measurement expect to dispense with use of projection postulates in treatments of measurement. I shall argue that superselection accounts of measurement are self-contradictory, and that treatments of infinite systems, if they can avoid the contradiction, are not true superselection accounts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 518 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

‡

For helpful discussions and critical remarks on early drafts, I would like to thank Arthur Fine and Michael Friedman, as well as two anonymous referees for this journal. For first-rate editorial direction, I would like to thank Jeremy Butterfield. And for what remains dark or unintelligible at this late stage, in spite of all the help I have received, I have only myself to thank.

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