Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)

This is one reason why I don't think the slit experiment is the best place to start. People show classical waves coming out of slits, then people think there are classical waves coming out of slits, when the reality is we don't have any clue what happens between a photon leaving a device, and an observation being made.
 
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Keeping in mind the Multiverse is unproven, consider the following argument for Everett's MWI:

The ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum physics was first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett III (father of Mark Everett, frontman of the band Eels). It states that all quantum possibilities are, in fact, real. When we roll the dice of quantum mechanics, each possible result comes true in its own parallel timeline. If this sounds mad, consider its main rival: the idea that ‘reality’ results from the conscious gaze. Things only happen, quantum states only resolve themselves, because we look at them. As Einstein is said to have asked, with some sarcasm, ‘would a sidelong glance by a mouse suffice?’ Given the alternative, the prospect of innumerable branching versions of history doesn’t seem like such a terrible bullet to bite.

Carroll makes a similar statement in one of the videos Bucky posted.

So we supposedly have two major options, and one of them involves the 'conscious gaze'. Since neither has been proven or disproven, it seems reasonable to conclude the relationship between consciousness & QM is an unanswered question.

This puts us back on track to consider the words of various physicists* discussed around here seeking the answer such as Stapp, Gao, Tegmark, Bohm, Goswami, Josephson, Penrose, Wheeler, Zeilinger, Kaku (here+ here), and Pepin.

*Stapp - Observer-Participancy
Gao - Panpsychism
Tegmark - Panpsychism
Bohm - Implicate Order
Goswami - Idealism
Josephson - Observer-Participancy
Penrose - Orch-OR
Wheeler - Observer-Participancy
Zeilinger - Underlying reality we can't get to via senses (See Kantian Noumenon)
Kaku - Seems agnostic about Idealism vs Panpsychism vs Materialism, but his book Future of Mind leans toward QM & Consciousness being interlinked
Pepin - Idealism
 
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Intention creates reality?!

I thought the discussion was about the role of consciousness in the collapse of the wave function? (if it collapses at all)

Well, it seems everything actually relies on the assumption that the wavefunction collapses. That may be false. There are some interpretations that actually don't allow for the wavefunction to collapse at all. No wavefunction collapse, no need for a "collapser", to put it in a way. So the issue may be put inside a false dilemma, it really depends on a lot of assumptions.
 
Well, it seems everything actually relies on the assumption that the wavefunction collapses. That may be false. There are some interpretations that actually don't allow for the wavefunction to collapse at all. No wavefunction collapse, no need for a "collapser", to put it in a way. So the issue may be put inside a false dilemma, it really depends on a lot of assumptions.
However, within the last year the wavefunction was shown to exist rather than being a mathematical abstraction.
 
However, within the last year the wavefunction was shown to exist rather than being a mathematical abstraction.

I never said it didn't existed, however, that it exists doesn't prove that it can collapse. In fact, the interpretations that claimed the wavefunction doesn't collapse already assumed that it exists and it's not a mathematical abstraction ( and not only they assumed it exist. They also assumed it's "un-collapsable"!).
 
Well, it seems everything actually relies on the assumption that the wavefunction collapses. That may be false. There are some interpretations that actually don't allow for the wavefunction to collapse at all. No wavefunction collapse, no need for a "collapser", to put it in a way. So the issue may be put inside a false dilemma, it really depends on a lot of assumptions.
Good point.
 
Closer to Truth: Quantum Physics of Consciousness

Are quantum events required for consciousness in a very special sense, far beyond the general sense that quantum events are part of all physical systems? What would it take for quantum events, on such a micro-scale, to be relevant for brain function, which operates at the much higher level of neurons and brain circuits? What would it mean?
 
I never said it didn't existed, however, that it exists doesn't prove that it can collapse. In fact, the interpretations that claimed the wavefunction doesn't collapse already assumed that it exists and it's not a mathematical abstraction ( and not only they assumed it exist. They also assumed it's "un-collapsable"!).
All of which does not bode well for the people that what to believe reality can't get along without them looking at it. That is what this small debate we are having here is about.
 
This puts us back on track to consider the words of various physicists* discussed around here seeking the answer such as Stapp, Gao, Tegmark, Bohm, Goswami, Josephson, Penrose, Wheeler, Zeilinger, Kaku (here+ here), and Pepin.

...
Bohm - Implicate Order
....


In this 1978 interview David Bohm talks to Evelyn Blau about his relationship with Krishnamurti. Bohm had already begun to question the division between the thinker and the products of thinking when in 1959 he came upon Krishnamurti's book Freedom from the Known. This led Bohm to seek out Krishnamurti and instigated a series of dialogues between the two men over many years, many which have been published in book form such as The Ending of Time,

In the latter part of the interview Bohm goes into depth concerning the question of the observer and the observed.

Also, some choice Bohm quotes:

The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.
–with Basil J. Hile, The Undivided Universe.

What is under discussion here is, of course, not merely a way of understanding and working with parapsychological phenomena. It is a different self-world view, emerging out of modern physics and yet going beyond the restrictive framework from which modern physics grew. In this way, the discoveries of modern physics come to give support to the movement in which the rigid division between observer and observed can be dropped—a movement that could evidently be the beginning of a fundamental change in [our understanding of] consciousness itself.
-The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 113-135

Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter . . . Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven , just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation.
-Statement of 1987, as quoted in Towards a Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human-Systems (2007) by Joseph Riggio, p. 66
 
This puts us back on track to consider the words of various physicists* discussed around here seeking the answer such as Stapp, Gao, Tegmark, Bohm, Goswami, Josephson, Penrose, Wheeler, Zeilinger, Kaku (here+ here), and Pepin.

Bohm - Implicate Order
...
Zeilinger - Underlying reality we can't get to via senses (See Kantian Noumenon)

Understanding Bohm’s Holoflux: Clearing Up a Conceptual Misunderstanding of the Holographic Paradigm and Clarifying its Signifigance
to Transpersonal Studies of Consciousness


The significance of Bohm’s assertion— that we can participate in the noumenon —cannot be underestimated. It invites the consideration that humankind is capable (at least in certain discrete states of consciousness) of being able to access the very source of reality beyond the veil of appearances (Tart, 1975, 1986). If this claim could be proven it would have a profound influence on transpersonal theory. But this paper’s focus is not a thorough examination of transpersonal theory and how Bohm’s views influence it. Rather, this paper’s purpose is to help clarify how Bohm’s views have been misunderstood, misused, and distorted. It is tempting to want to leap ahead and begin to theorize and contemplate the relevance that Bohm’s unifying vision of cosmos and consciousness—the implicate order—has had and will have on transpersonal psychology. However, before attempting this, the more immediate task of clarifying some essential points about his theory must be first undertaken.

eta:

Also check out Josephson's views on touching this transcendental reality.
 
An article showing the debate about consciousness affecting things at the quantum level is still in question:

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality


Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871)

However, Alain Aspect, a physicist who performed the first Bell-type experiment in the 1980s, thinks the team's philosophical conclusions are subjective. "There are other types of non-local models that are not addressed by either Leggett's inequalities or the experiment," he said. "But I rather share the view that such debates, and accompanying experiments such as those by [the Austrian team], allow us to look deeper into the mysteries of quantum mechanics."

Two more articles relating to QM experiments can be found here.
 
Is quantum mechanics relevant to the philosophy of mind (and the other way around)?

...quantum mechanics certainly deserves more consideration in the philosophy of mind. In my view, claiming that quantum effects reduce to “microscopic noise” simply disregards the epistemic depth of the measurement problem, just as claiming that the problem of consciousness is essentially biological disregards its ontological depth. These two “dogmas” of philosophy of mind are mutually reinforcing and we should reject them altogether if we want to make sense of consciousness as well as of quantum mechanics.
 
I think much of the confusion here comes because people confuse two terms: Counterfactual Definiteness, and realism. Realism is the philosophical position that there are objective things that do exist when no conscious observer is watching them, and Counterfactual Definiteness is the view that there are objective things that do exist when no conscious observer is watching them that have definitive values. The key is in the "that have definitive values". QM could at most show us that things really do have a probabilistic nature, ¿but how one can go from the existence of a wavefunction with a probabilistic nature to claim that when no one is seeing there isn't a wavefunction with a probabilistic nature, but instead no reality at all? Philosophical anti-realism seems to require a much more extreme sort of thing than does anti-counterfactual definiteness, given philosophical anti-realism would deny even the existence of the wavefunction, while anti-counterfactual definiteness would replace the newtonian view of determinism with probabilistic nature, but still conserving a core reality independent of observer.
 
Woah Woah Woah. Massimo the arch skeptic is arguing for quantum effects being involved in mind?

Never mind...

Massimo argues for something much more radical actually...

'One last parting shot, about a topic that the astute reader may have noticed I have bypassed so far: if every thing is gone and we only have mathematical structures and relations, what is the ontological status of mathematical objects themselves? Here are the only relevant quotes from Ladyman and Ross that I could find:

" OSR as we develop it is in principle friendly to a naturalized version of Platonism. ... One distinct, and very interesting, possibility is that as we become truly used to thinking of the stuff of the physical universe as being patterns rather than little things, the traditional gulf between Platonistic realism about mathematics and naturalistic realism about physics will shrink or even vanish. ... [Bertrand Russell] was first and foremost a Platonist. But as we pointed out there are versions of Platonism that are compatible with naturalism; and Russell’s Platonism was motivated by facts about mathematics and its relationship to science, so was PNC [Principle of Naturalistic Closure] -compatible."

Wild stuff, no? Now I don’t feel too badly about having written in sympathetic terms about mathematical Platonism...'
 
Massimo argues for something much more radical actually...

'One last parting shot, about a topic that the astute reader may have noticed I have bypassed so far: if every thing is gone and we only have mathematical structures and relations, what is the ontological status of mathematical objects themselves? Here are the only relevant quotes from Ladyman and Ross that I could find:

" OSR as we develop it is in principle friendly to a naturalized version of Platonism. ... One distinct, and very interesting, possibility is that as we become truly used to thinking of the stuff of the physical universe as being patterns rather than little things, the traditional gulf between Platonistic realism about mathematics and naturalistic realism about physics will shrink or even vanish. ... [Bertrand Russell] was first and foremost a Platonist. But as we pointed out there are versions of Platonism that are compatible with naturalism; and Russell’s Platonism was motivated by facts about mathematics and its relationship to science, so was PNC [Principle of Naturalistic Closure] -compatible."

Wild stuff, no? Now I don’t feel too badly about having written in sympathetic terms about mathematical Platonism...'



Have you people read the work on Quantum consciousness which experimentally disproves consciousness as a factor in the double slit experiment?

REPRINT
www.danko-nikolic.com/.../2011/.../Yu-and-Nikolic-Qm-and-consciousness- Annalen-Physik.pdf

Oct 13, 2011 ... Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness ..... The experimental results that falsify predictions i) and ii) already exist. Firstly, in experiments similar to thatproposed here (e.g., [11, 20, 33]), it was shown that ifwhich-pathinformation ...obtainable, then even though no actual attempt was made to extract ...
 
I always post this one but it continues to be ignored.



Check out this link to work done which says Quantum consciousness does not exist.


REPRINT
www.danko-nikolic.com/.../2011/.../Yu-and-Nikolic-Qm-and-consciousness- Annalen-Physik.pdf

Oct 13, 2011 ... Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness ..... The experimental results that falsify predictions i) and ii) already exist. Firstly, in experiments similar to thatproposed here (e.g., [11, 20, 33]), it was shown that ifwhich-pathinformation ...obtainable, then even though no actual attempt was made to extract ...

http://www.google.com/search?client...rference+pattern+was+found.&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
 
Check out this link to work done which says Quantum consciousness does not exist.


REPRINT
www.danko-nikolic.com/.../2011/.../Yu-and-Nikolic-Qm-and-consciousness- Annalen-Physik.pdf

Oct 13, 2011 ... Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness ..... The experimental results that falsify predictions i) and ii) already exist. Firstly, in experiments similar to thatproposed here (e.g., [11, 20, 33]), it was shown that ifwhich-pathinformation ...obtainable, then even though no actual attempt was made to extract ...

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=The experimental results that falsify predictions i) and ii) already exist. Firstly, in experiments similar to that proposed here (e.g., [11, 20, 33]), it was shown that if “which-path” information was in principle obtainable, then even though no actual attempt was made to extract this information (i.e., to measure it), no interference pattern was found.&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

This is the same link in the OP right?
 
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