I agree with you up until your last paragraph: the strength of Fuchs’ papers are not in their direct criticism of Everettian interpretations (Kent’s papers are a lot better at that).
For your last paragraph, I think Fuchs would take umbrage at the idea that you are necessarily “modeling the thing” when you assign a quantum state to a given system. I don’t think he believes that systems have a “true ontic state” of which quantum states are representative. Rather, the quantum state is merely a representation of an agent’s beliefs about the future outcomes of their interventions/measurements into the universe. Nevertheless, Fuchs claims to be a scientific realist.
I’m deliberately using the word “think” a lot here because I’m not confident of relaying Fuchs’ views faithfully (this isn’t directly my area of research). I haven’t adopted a QBist interpretation (or any other), but from what I’ve read I feel it’s worth serious discussion.
You also mentioned theorems constraining ontology. You may be interested in Fuchs’ take on Bell’s Theorem: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.5253v1.pdf . I have been to a talk where he explains why the PBR theorem doesn’t impact his interpretation, although the details evade me (and I can’t find anything written about it by him online).
I agree with you up until your last paragraph: the strength of Fuchs’ papers are not in their direct criticism of Everettian interpretations (Kent’s papers are a lot better at that).
For your last paragraph, I think Fuchs would take umbrage at the idea that you are necessarily “modeling the thing” when you assign a quantum state to a given system. I don’t think he believes that systems have a “true ontic state” of which quantum states are representative. Rather, the quantum state is merely a representation of an agent’s beliefs about the future outcomes of their interventions/measurements into the universe. Nevertheless, Fuchs claims to be a scientific realist.
I’m deliberately using the word “think” a lot here because I’m not confident of relaying Fuchs’ views faithfully (this isn’t directly my area of research). I haven’t adopted a QBist interpretation (or any other), but from what I’ve read I feel it’s worth serious discussion.
You also mentioned theorems constraining ontology. You may be interested in Fuchs’ take on Bell’s Theorem: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.5253v1.pdf . I have been to a talk where he explains why the PBR theorem doesn’t impact his interpretation, although the details evade me (and I can’t find anything written about it by him online).