Abstract

This note outlines a “probability-field” interpretation of quantum mechanics.  The proposal takes standard mathematics —especially the path-integral—as a direct description of reality rather than of hidden objects.  In this view, probabilities themselves are the primitive ontology: physical reality is a dynamically evolving field of structured probability.  Measurement means a momentary local stabilization of one region of this field – what Bell called ‘flashes’- not collapse or any new kind of information.  The account integrates elements of objective-chance theories, the sum-over-histories formalism, and experiential process philosophy, offering a unified picture of physics and observation.  A formal development of this approach would have interesting implications for quantum computing.

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1  Introduction

Quantum mechanics continues to challenge our language.  Its formalism delivers exquisite predictions, yet the words used to describe its elements—particle, field, spin, measurement are just a few of these—are inherited from classical metaphors.  Each term implies a microscopic object or process that the mathematics itself does not require or necessarily imply.  The “probability-field” interpretation begins by discarding this classical residue.  It treats the wavefunction and the path-integral not as descriptions of something that has probabilities, but as the very texture of the world: structured probability as such.

There are two reasons we might want to do this.  First, to remove the apparent paradoxes of duality, entanglement, and collapse by recognizing them as linguistic artifacts. In other words, to acknowledge that linguistic concepts have validity, but simply may not apply in a classical way. Second, to provide a conceptual continuity between physical theory and conscious experience. Brains participate in the same probabilistic field they register. We call our responses feelings.

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2  Relation to Prior Work

The approach does not accord entirely with any recently proposed systems.

• Objective chance and propensity views.  Popper and Heisenberg suggested that quantum probabilities express real tendencies of situations.  The present account agrees, but grounds those tendencies directly in the path-integral structure rather than in hidden dispositional properties.

• Consistent and decoherent histories (Griffiths 1984; Gell-Mann & Hartle 1990) and Sorkin’s quantum measure theory recast quantum theory as a generalized probability measure over histories.  The probability-field view inherits their mathematics but interprets the measure itself as the fabric of reality, not merely a rule for assigning probabilities to coarse-grained events.

• The Ithaca interpretation (Mermin 1998) makes correlations fundamental: “correlations without correlata.”  The present view extends this by treating the correlations as dynamically continuous—embodied in a global probability field whose geometry gives rise to those correlations.

• QBism and pragmatist approaches (Fuchs & Peres 2000) identify the wavefunction with agents’ expectations.  In contrast, the current ontology is objective, not agent-relative: probabilities exist independently of observers, though they are felt by them.

• Ulfbeck & Bohr’s “genuine fortuitousness” and Mohrhoff’s event ontology treat detector clicks as fundamental.  The probability-field interpretation locates fundamentality one step deeper: in the continuous distribution of probabilistic potentialities from which discrete events crystallize.

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3  Distinctive Elements of the Present Proposal

1. Probabilities as primary ontology.

Reality consists of structured probabilities, not of objects that possess them.  The need to objectify the outcomes is removed and incoporated into the system of probabilities.

2. Path-integral formulation.

The Feynman weight is re-interpreted as an amount of probability.  The sum over histories describes the self-organization of these amounts into stable patterns.

3. Measurement as stabilization (conditioning).

Decoherence and environmental coupling are not collapses but a phenomenon describing local interference within the probability field.  A measurement is a resonance that suggestion the probable existence and coherence of one region of the field with its surroundings.

4. Experiential resonance.

Conscious systems, themselves complex probability fields, and not independent, but feel these stabilisations.  Experience is participation in probability, not observation of an external world.

5. Entanglement and computation.

Entanglement expresses the curvature or inseparability of the global probability field.  It is a glimpse of the infinity of the system. Quantum computing exploits controlled interference within this unlimited geometry; and qubits are structured probability subpatterns, not miniature physical systems. Decoherence corresponds to geometric smoothing, and error correction to the maintenance of phase coherence within this field.

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4  Development

The present note may serve as a conceptual preface to a full exposition.  This might

1. develop a formal framework using the sum-over-histories method;

2. analyse the double-slit and Stern–Gerlach experiments within it;

3. reconstruct the standard quantum-computing gates and the Bell-state circuit as examples of engineered interference of probability patterns; and

4. explore the implications for measurement theory, decoherence, and the philosophy of mind.

The probability-field interpretation does not replace the mathematics of quantum theory; it provides a simpler ontology for it.  The physical world, on this view, is neither a collection of objects nor a mere web of information—it is the continuous flow of probabilistic potentiality realising itself in experience.

5. Mostly importantly, perhaps, this approach proposes a more accessible language for quantum physics, in which the currently abstract and impossible collisions of apparent common sense are removed entirely. In a probability field interpretation the quantum becomes the speakable.