Related papers: Conscious observers clarify many worlds
The way we view the reality of nature, including ourselves, depend on consciousness.It also defines the identity of the person, since we know people in terms of their experiences. In general, consciousness defines human existence in this…
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics poses a simple question. What would reality look like if everything evolved in time according to the same quantum equations? There is an attractive consistency to treating…
A brief review is given of the present state of an approach to consistency between basic quantum mechanics and a unique macroscopic reality, with no assumption of branching in the state of the universe. The main new idea consists in the…
In recent papers, Zurek has objected to the decision-theoretic approach of Deutsch and Wallace to deriving the Born rule for quantum probabilities on the grounds that it courts circularity. Deutsch and Wallace assume that the many worlds…
As physics searches for invariants in observations, this paper looks for invariants of probabilistic observation without assuming physical structure. Structure emerges from the basic assumption of science that new information shall lead to…
Three recent arguments seek to show that the universal applicability of unitary quantum theory is inconsistent with the assumption that a well-conducted measurement always has a definite physical outcome. In this paper I restate and analyze…
In psychological measurements, two levels should be distinguished: the 'individual level', relative to the different participants in a given cognitive situation, and the 'collective level', relative to the overall statistics of their…
The Bell experiment is discussed in the light of a new approach to the foundation of quantum mechanics. It is concluded from the basic model that the mind of any observer must be limited in some way: In certain contexts, he is simply not…
This paper examines whether unitary evolution alone is sufficient to explain emergence of the classical world from the perspective of computability theory. Specifically, it looks at the problem of how the choice related to the measurement…
In this paper, epistemology and ontology of quantum states are discussed based on a completely new way of founding quantum theory. The fundamental notions are conceptual variables in the mind of an observer or in the joint minds of a group…
It is shown that the conclusion of the paper "Hidden assumptions in decoherence theory" (quant-ph/0001021) is the result of a misunderstanding of the concept of pointer states. It is argued that pointer states are selected by the…
Many observers can simultaneously measure different parts of an environment of a quantum system in order to find out its state. To study this problem we generalize the formalism of conditional master equations to the multiple observer case.…
Quantum measurement theory is applied to quantum-like modeling of coherent generation of perceptions and emotions and generally for emotional coloring of conscious experiences. In quantum theory, a system should be separated from an…
The Born rule assigns a probability to any possible outcome of a quantum measurement, but leaves open the question how these probabilities are to be interpreted and, in particular, how they relate to the outcome observed in an actual…
Emergence of the classical world from the quantum substrate of our Universe is a long-standing conundrum. I describe three insights into the transition from quantum to classical that are based on the recognition of the role of the…
A simple toy model is proposed that would allow conscious perceptions to be either classical (perceptions of objects without large quantum uncertainties or variances) or highly quantum (e.g., having large variances in the perceived position…
We will argue that a phenomenological analysis of consciousness, similar to that of Husserl, shows that the effects of phenomenal qualities shape our perception of the world. It also shows the way the physical and mathematical sciences…
Understanding the causal influences that hold among parts of a system is critical both to explaining that system's natural behaviour and to controlling it through targeted interventions. In a quantum world, understanding causal relations is…
In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However,…
Sensible Quantum Mechanics or Mindless Sensationalism is a framework for relating consciousness to a quantum universe. It states that each conscious perception has a measure that is given by the expectation value of a corresponding quantum…