  Since its emergence, quantum mechanics has been a challenge for an
understanding of reality which is based on our intuition in a classical world.
Nevertheless, it has often been tried to impose this understanding of reality
on quantum theory - with limited success. Instead, it might be a better
alternative to redefine the meaning of physical reality. This is the objective
of the paper. A consideration of the quantum measurement process, conditional
probabilities and some well-known typical quantum physical experiments provides
the reasoning for the following three hypotheses: (1) Prior to a first
measurement, a physical system is not in a quantum state. (2) Physical reality
is all that and only that about which (classical) information is available in
the universe. (3) Information creation is an independent process and is not
covered by the Schroedinger equation. It is the first step of the quantum
measurement process and does not have a classical counterpart. The first
hypothesis makes sense only if the quantum measurement process can be described
without presupposing an initial state for the system under consideration. This
becomes possible by the objective conditional probabilities which represent the
transition probabilities between the outcomes of successive quantum
measurements and have been introduced by the author in some recent papers. The
second hypothesis holds as well in the classical case, but a certain
incompleteness of reality is typical of quantum mechanics and the origin of
many quantum phenomena. Classically, the existence of a complete reality is
presumed, and hypothesis 3 has no meaning then.
