Here is a question I am curious about. Is the wave function objective or subject

Question

Here is a question I am curious about.

Is the wave function objective or subjective, or is such a question meaningless?

Conventionally, subjectivity is as follows: if a quantity is subjective then it is possible for two different people to legitimately give it different values. For example, in Bayesian probability theory, probabilities are considered subjective, because two agents with access to different data will have different posteriors.

So suppose two scientists, A and B, have access to different information about the same quantum system. If A believes it has one wavefunction and B believes it has another, is one of them necessarily "right" and the other "wrong"? If so then the wavefunction is objective, but otherwise it must contain some subjective element.

Explanation / Answer

The wave function is a solution of an equation.

It is as subjective and as objective as all mathematical solutions to equations describing physical fields, whether classical or quantum mechanical.

Certainly as a solution it is objective, a formula written on paper.

Subjectivity enters in the choice of the equation to be solved and thus the choice of the specific solution.

Objectivity enters again because the particular equation was chosen due to its being appropriate to the problem, having fitted previous experimental observations.

I consider all this as navel gazing.

Are the solutions of Maxwell's equations objective or subjective? What about the gravitational orbit solutions?

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