Relational Objectivity in the Presence of Finite Quantum Resources

Abstract The no-go theorems of Bell and Kochen and Specker could be interpreted as implying that the notions of system and experimental context are fundamentally inseparable. In this interpretation, statements such as ‘spin is “up” along direction $x$’ are relational statements about the configurations of macroscopic devices which are mediated by the spin and not about any intrinsic properties of the spin. The operational meaning of these statements is provided by the practically infinite resources of macroscopic devices that serve to define the notion of a direction in three-dimensional space. This is the subject of ‘textbook quantum mechanics’: the description of quantum systems in relation to an experimental context. Therefore, the subject that textbook quantum mechanics treats as a formally closed system is not a physically isolated system. The subject rather describes the physical relation that a microscopic system holds with some macroscopic environment. Can one go beyond that? Relational quantum mechanics endeavours to provide a relational description between any quantum systems without the necessity of involving macroscopic devices. However, by applying ‘textbook quantum mechanics’ in such situations, it implicitly assumes infinite resources, even for simple quantum systems such as spins, which have no capacity to define an experimental context. This leads to conceptual difficulties. As an alternative, we analyse Penrose’s spin network proposal as a potential formalisation of quantum theory that goes beyond the textbook framework: a description in presence of finite resources, which is inherently relational and inseparable in the system-context entity.