Related papers: Consciousness and the Wigner's friend problem
In this brief note I argue that putting conscious observers at the center of the considerations clarifies and strengthens the many-worlds interpretation. The basic assumption, which seems extremely plausible based on our current…
An analysis has been performed of the theories and postulates advanced by von Neumann, London and Bauer, and Wigner, concerning the role that consciousness might play in the collapse of the wave function, which has become known as the…
The quantum theory of decoherence plays an important role in a pragmatist interpretation of quantum theory. It governs the descriptive content of claims about values of physical magnitudes and offers advice on when to use quantum…
The problem of measurement is often considered as an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve (or to dissolve) it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the…
Identifying the physiological processes in the central nervous system that underlie our conscious experiences has been at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. While the principles of classical physics were long found to be…
There has been an upsurge of interest in the consequences for quantum physics of the so-called Wigner's Friend Paradox. In its original formulation, the paradox has been turned inside out, and virtually every aspect of it has been looked…
The Wigner's friend thought experiment was intended to illustrate the difficulty one has in describing an agent as a quantum system when that agent performs a measurement. While it does pose a challenge to the orthodox interpretation of…
The problem investigated in this paper is einselection, i. e. the selection of mutually exclusive quantum states with definite probabilities through decoherence. Its study is based on a theory of decoherence resulting from the projection…
In a previous paper, the author proposed a quantum mechanical interaction that would insure that the evolution of subjective states would parallel the evolution of biological states, as required by von Neumann's theory of measurement. The…
The Wigner's friend paradox concerns one of the most puzzling problems of quantum mechanics: the consistent description of multiple nested observers. Recently, a variation of Wigner's gedankenexperiment, introduced by Frauchiger and Renner,…
We discuss the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner based on an "extended Wigner's friend" thought experiment which is supposed to show that any single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics leads to inconsistent predictions if it is…
Recently, it has been stated that single-world interpretations of quantum theory are logically inconsistent. The claim is derived from contradicting statements of agents in a setup combining two Wigner's-friend experiments. Those statements…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
Quantum decoherence is the disappearance of simple phase relations within a discrete quantum system as a result of interactions with an environment. For many applications, the question is not necessarily how to avoid (inevitable)…
We show that it is possible to explain the quantum measurement process within the framework of quantum mechanics without any additional postulates. The key concept of the theory is decoherence, which appears as an inherent characteristic of…
Recent experiments (gedanken or otherwise) and theorems in quantum mechanics (QM), such as new iterations on Wigner's friend and delayed choice, have led many people to claim that QM is not compatible with determinate and intersubjectively…
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…
In this work we investigate the relation between quantum measurements and decoherence, in order to formally express the necessity of the latter for obtaining an informative output from the former. To this aim, referring to the Von Neumann…
The notion of probability plays a crucial role in quantum mechanics. It appears in quantum mechanics as the Born rule. In modern mathematics which describes quantum mechanics, however, probability theory means nothing other than measure…
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…