Defending Many Worlds via Case Discrimination: An Attempt to Showcase the Conceptual Incoherence of Anti-Realist Interpretations and Relational Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

In this work, an alternative attempt to motivate the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is undertaken. The usual way of arguing for MWI mostly revolves around how it might solve the measurement problem in a more straightforward and concise manner than rival interpretations. However, here an effort is made to defend MWI in an indirect manner, namely via repeated case discrimination and a process of ‘conceptual elimination’. That is, it will be argued that its major rivals, with QBism and Relational Quantum-Mechanics being among the most noteworthy ones, either face conceptual incoherence or conceptually collapse into a variant of MWI. Finally, it is argued that hidden-variable theories face severe challenges when being applied to Quantum Field Theory such that appropriate modifications may lead back to MWI, thereby purportedly leaving MWI as the only viable option.

Keywords

• foundations of physics
• interpretations of quantum mechanics
• QBism
• relational quantum mechanics
• Informational Monism
• Ontic Structural Realism