Debate
TIQM faces a number of common criticisms. The following is partial list and some replies:
1. “TI is not mathematically precise.”
Offer waves (OW) obey the Schrödinger equation and Confirmation waves (CW) obey the complex conjugate Schrödinger equation. A transaction is a genuinely stochastic event, and therefore does not obey a deterministic equation. Outcomes based on actualized transactions obey the Born Rule and, as noted in Cramer (1986), TI provides a derivation of the Born Rule rather than assuming it as in standard quantum mechanics (QM).
2. “TI does not generate new predictions / is not testable / has not been tested.”
TI is an exact interpretation of QM and so its predictions must be the same as QM. Like the many-worlds interpretation (MWI), TI is a ‘pure’ interpretation in that it does not add anything ad hoc but provides a physical referent for a part of the formalism that has lacked one (the advanced states implicitly appearing in the Born Rule). Thus the demand often placed on TI for new predictions or testability is a mistaken one that misconstrues the project of interpretation as one of theory modification.
3. “It is not made clear where in spacetime a transaction occurs.”
One clear account is given in Cramer (1986), which pictures a transaction as a four-vector standing wave whose endpoints are the emission and absorption events. Other possible accounts are being explored in which the formation of a transaction is an a-spatiotemporal process, or one taking place on a level of possibility rather than actuality.
4. “Maudlin (1996, 2002) has demonstrated that TI is inconsistent.”
Maudlin (see below) raised an interesting challenge for TI which has been addressed by (at least) four different authors, all of which have presented ways for TI to remain viable in the face of this challenge:
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- Berkovitz, J. (2002). ``On Causal Loops in the Quantum Realm,” in T. Placek and J. Butterfield (Ed.), Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Modality, Probability and Bell's Theorems, Kluwer, 233-255.
- Cramer J. G. (2005). “The Quantum Handshake: A Review of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,” presented at “Time-Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics” Conference, Sydney, Australia, July 23, 2005. Available at: http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/PowerPoint/Sydney_20050723_a.ppt
- Kastner, R. E. (2006). “Cramer's Transactional Interpretation and Causal Loop Problems,” Synthese 150, 1-14.
- Marchildon, L. (2006). “Causal Loops and Collapse in the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,” Physics Essays 19, 422.
5. It is not clear how the transactional interpretation handles the quantum mechanics of more than one particle.
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- Daniel F. Styer, Miranda S. Balkin, Kathryn M. Becker, Matthew R. Burns, Christopher E. Dudley, Scott T. Forth, Jeremy S. Gaumer, Mark A. Kramer, David C. Oertel, Leonard H. Park, Marie T. Rinkoski, Clait T. Smith and Timothy D. Wotherspoon (2002) "Nine formulations of quantum mechanics," American Journal of Physics 70, 288-297.
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