esse est percipi, part 4



As I tried to show in the previous blog posts, the interpretation of quantum physics is to a large extent a debate
on how to understand "psychophysical parallelism" and how to assign (our) conscious experience to a wave function and/or its components.
This is one reason why most 'real physicists' usually stay away from this topic.

But if you want to read even more about it, I recommend the following as starting points:



H. D. Zeh: "Epistemological consequences of quantum nonlocality (entanglement) are discussed under the assumption
of a universally valid Schroedinger equation in the absence of hidden variables.
This leads inevitably to a many-minds interpretation."



plato about many minds: "... one might well conclude that a single-mind theory, where each observer has one mind that evolves randomly given the evolution of the standard quantum mechanical state, would be preferable."



Dowker & Kent (also here): "We examine critically Gell-Mann and Hartle's interpretation of the formalism,
and in particular their discussions of communication, prediction and retrodiction,
and conclude that their explanation of the apparent persistence of quasiclassicality
relies on assumptions about an as yet unknown theory of experience."



Bernard d'Espagnat: "The central claim, in this paper, is that the Schroedinger cat – or Wigner’s friend –
paradox cannot be really solved without going deeply into a most basic question,
namely: are we able to describe things as they really are or should we rest content
with describing our experience?"



Last but not least, the webpage of Peter Hankins is not a bad reference for the
traditional discussion of conscious entities and the mind-body problem.


1 comment:

Ponder Stibbons said...

Love the quote marks around 'real physicists'.