Drs. Hellman and Healey are conducting a small, interdisciplinary conference on "Quantum Measurement: Decoherence and Modal Interpretations." The workshop is to take place at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, May 4-7, 1995. Their goal is to bring together leading physicists and philosophers of science who share a common interest in the problems of quantum measurement so that each group may become better acquainted with work of the other group. Both groups have been actively pursuing research programs that may represent genuine progress on this long-standing, deep problem-area in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Participating philosophers of science are concentrating on various recently proposed "modal" and "interactive" interpretations which, consistently with known limitations, allow assignments of definite values of measurable quantities in certain circumstances (including measurement interactions) in which such values are not recognized according to the conventional interpretative framework. Participating physicists are concentrating on both the evidence for a genuine problem at the macroscopic level and on the role of environmentally-induced decoherence of the state in bringing about definite values of measurable quantities. All participants should seek to understand how these proposals are related to one another and to what extent any promising approach to the measurement problem emerges from them. The conference can stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation in the continued pursuit of answers to these related questions.
