Contexts, systems, modalities: A physically realist framework for quantum mechanics

I will present a possible way to make usual quantum mechanics fully compatible with physical realism, defined as the statement that the goal ofphysics is to study entities of the natural world, existing independently from any particular observer’s perception, and obeying universal and intelligible rules. A new ontology for quantum mechanics is proposed, where physical properties are attributed jointly to the system, and to the context in which it is embedded. In combination with a quantization principle, this non-classical definition of physical reality sheds new light on counter-intuitive features of quantum mechanics such as the origin of probabilities, non-locality, and the quantum-classical boundary. Eventually, this quantum ontology translates into physically realist axioms, allowing to recover the quantum formalism and Born's rule: in this heuristic approach, quantization comes first, interferences second.

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