The Concept of Reality in the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Reality is an extremely broad concept, so we aim to provide an overview of its aspects and presumptions, as well as clarify its definitions for conceptual use. Since the conception of reality will change vastly in quantum mechanics, first we want to provide an overview on aspects of classical realism, which are relevant to our discussion on reality in quantum mechanics. As [Braver 2007, p. 14] points out realism in not always defined in a straightforward way: Of course, there are as many species of realism as there are kinds of objects, since realism can be type-specific or “local” rather than “global”: one can be a realist about stars but not about the occurrence of the sequence “7777” in pi; a realist about the past, but not about the future; a realist about unobserved, but not unobservables; or the reverse for each pair.