# About the Notion of Truth in the Decoherent Histories Approach: a Reply to Griffiths.

## Abstract

Griffiths claims that the “single family rule”, a basic postulate of the decoherent histories approach, rules out our requirement that any decoherent history has a unique truth value, independently from the decoherent family to which it may belong. Here we analyze the reasons which make our requirement indispensable and we discuss the consequences of rejecting it.

This short letter is a reply to Griffiths’ article Consistent histories, quantum truth functionals, and hidden variables , in which he has raised some objections to our paper Can the decoherent histories description of reality be considered satisfactory? . For a more detailed analysis of the arguments of , we refer the reader to .

First of all, we would like to summarize the main features of the DH approach, about which there seems not to be a disagreement between Griffiths and us:

1. Within a given decoherent family everything goes like in Classical Mechanics: the probability distribution assigned to the histories obeys the classical probability rules; it is possible to define a Boolean structure, so it is possible to speak about the conjunction, disjunction of two histories and about the negation of an history; moreover, one can define the logical implication between two histories, so that also reasonings of the type “if … then …” are possible.
2. As Griffiths admits in the above quoted paper, it is possible to assign truth–values to all histories of a given decoherent family. This move has an important physical meaning: it means that, in spite of the probabilistic structure of the theory, one can speak of the properties actually possessed by the physical system under study, and not only of the probability that such properties be possessed. In order to understand this important point, let us remember that also in Classical Statistical Mechanics one generally has only a probabilistic knowledge of the physical system; despite of this, he can claim that the system has well defined physical properties (positions and momenta of its constituents, from which all other properties can be derived), but he doesn’t know which they are simply because he is ignorant about the precise state of the system. From the logical–mathematical point of view, the legitimacy of considering properties as objectively possessed is a consequence of the fact that one can define a Boolean algebra in phase space and attach truth–values to its subsets in a consistent way.   
In Standard Quantum Mechanics, on the other hand, one cannot even think that systems possess physical properties prior to measurements: mathematically, this is reflected in the peculiar properties of the Hilbert space (with dimension greater than 2): the set of projection operators cannot be endowed with a Boolean structure, and it is not possible to attach consistently truth–values to them, as implied by the theorems of Gleason, Bell and Kochen and Specker.   
Thus, giving a truth value to the histories of a given decoherent family corresponds to the assertion that such histories speak of specific physical properties that the system under study possesses objectively, independently from our (in general) probabilistic knowledge of the system and of any act of measurement. This, in our opinion, is the nicest feature of the DH formalism, the one emboding all its advantages with respect to the standard quantum formalism.
3. When one deals with more that one decoherent family, things become rather problematic: if such families can be accomodated into a single decoherent family, then all what we have said previously remains valid. If this is not possible (and this is likely to happen most of the times), then any reasoning, any conclusion derived by using histories which belong to incompatible families, are devoid of any physical meaning. Griffiths felt the necessity to promote this fact , which we have indicated as the “single family rule”, to a basic rule of the DH approach: a meaningful description of a (closed) quantum mechanical system, including its time development, must employ a single framework \[i.e. decoherent family\] . This rule gives rise to some curious situations, which do not have any classical analogue, but we will not discuss these matters now. Actually, we agree that they do not lead to formal inconsistencies.

Now, let us come to our argument. The formalism of DH implies, as it is obvious and can be easily checked, that any given decoherent history belongs in general to many different decoherent families. As we have argued under 2., in any of these decoherent families, such a history has a precise truth–value. As already mentioned, also Griffiths seems to agree on this. Now the relevant question is: does the truth value of the considered history depend on the decoherent family to which it may belong? We think that the answer must be “no”, because (as we said in 2.) truth–values refer to properties objectively possessed by the physical system under study, and if the truth–value of a decoherent history would change according to the decoherent family to which it belongs, also the properties that such a history attaches to the physical system would change by changing the decoherent family. We have formalized these considerations in the following assumption (which is assumption (c) of ):

> Any given decoherent history has a unique truth value (0 or 1), which is independent from the decoherent family to which the history is considered to belong.

As mentioned in the abstract, in , Griffiths claims that such an assumption violates the “single family rule” and as such it cannot be considered as part of the DH approach. With reference to this point we want first of all to make clear that nowhere, in the original formulations of the “single family rule”, it was mentioned that a given decoherent history can (or cannot) have different truth values according to the family to which it belongs; nowhere, directly or indirectly, reference was made to our assumption (since we have been the first to put it forward). Thus, it is not correct to claim that such a rule already excluded our assumption. If Griffiths claims that the “single family rule” excludes (c), then he is proposing a new, extended, interpretation of such a rule.

Having clarified this point, we are ready to accept that Griffiths rejects our assumption: he is perfectly free to do so. But we pretend that he accepts all the consequence (which we are going to analyze) of such a move. Denying (c) simply means to assert that:

> There are decoherent histories whose truth–values depend on the decoherent family to which they (are thought or considered to) belong, i.e. in some families they are, for example, true, while in other families they are false.

This, in turn, means accepting that statements like “this table is here”, “the Earth is moving around the Sun”, “that electron has spin up along such a direction” are — in general — neither true nor false per se: each of them acquires a truth value only when it is considered a member of a precise (among the infinitely many ones which are possible) decoherent family; moreover, their truth values may change according to the decoherent family to which they are associated. In some families it may be true that “this table is here” or that “the Earth is moving around the Sun”, while in other families it may be false that “this table is here” or that “the Earth is moving around the Sun”. This state of affairs is the direct consequence of denying our assumption, and it should be evident to anyone that if one takes such a position then he is spoiling the statements of the DH approach of any physical meaning whatsoever.

We can then summarize the whole debate between Griffiths and us in the following terms. In our papers  and , we have considered the following four assumptions:

1. Every family of decoherent histories can be (naturally) endowed with a Boolean structure allowing to recover classical reasoning,
2. Within every decoherent family it is possible to assign to its histories truth values which preserve the Boolean structure (i.e. they form an homomorphism),
3. Every decoherent history has a unique truth value, independently from the decoherent family to which it may be considered to belong,
4. Any decoherent family can be taken into account,

and we have shown that they lead to a Kochen-and-Specker-like contradiction. This implies that at least one of them must be rejected in order to avoid inconsistencies within the DH approach. Griffiths rejects assumption (c), while we, in accordance with the previous analysis, believe that this move is unacceptable. Accordingly, in our papers we have suggested that one should limit, resorting to precise and physically meaningful criteria, the set of decoherent histories which can be taken into account. Such a move might lead to a physically acceptable and sensible new formulation of the DH approach.