During recent years, there is increasing interest in the ontological status and meaning of the wave function, and it seems that there is even a shift in research focus from the measurement problem to the problem of interpreting the wave function. This motivates us to organize an online workshop on the meaning of the wave function. This group aims to address the controversies surrounding the different viewpoints (Bayesian, epistemic, nomological, ontic, etc).
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Primitive Ontology in a Nutshell
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The aim of the paper is to explore a particular approach on how to read off the metaphysics from fundamental physical theories: the primitive ontology approach. According to this view, any fundamental physical theory has a well-defined architecture, to the foundation of which there is the primitive ontology, which represents matter. The primitive ontology constitutes the building blocks of everything else in the world, while the other variables in the theory are useful to implement the law of evolution for the primitive ontology.
(see attached pdf files: 1-short version of the paper; 2-slides; 3-longer version of the paper)
We may discuss Valia’s papers here after her talk on Skype, which is on live at URL http://www.ijqf.org/archives/841. You may listen to her talk and see her ppt slides (see above attachments) on your computer at the same time.
OK, since I have been outed as a lurker by Shan, let me ask how you would describe the role of the non-primitive ontology in a theory that does not support a division into states at a given time and dynamics? You previously suggested that the role of the non primitive ontology is to compute how the primitive ontology evolves in time, but what would you say in a non globally hyperbolic spacetime for example?
Shan, I should also comment that piping the audio from Skype into Google Hangouts, which is what I assume you are doing, does not work very well. Your audio is OK, but Valia and Richard were quite difficult to hear.
If I understand correctly your question, I would say that in a theory directly framed in spacetime rather than in 3-d space the nPO variables would help to close the dynamics for the spacetime histories of the PO (like in GRWf)
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