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arXiv:1707.01346

Comment on the paper Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness by Yu and Nikolic (2011)

Catherine M Reason

Published Jul 5, 2017• 0 citations
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Abstract

This is a brief comment on the paper "Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness" by Shan Yu and Danko Nikolic [1]. Yu and Nikolic argue that the "consciousness causes collapse hypothesis" interpretation of quantum mechanics, or CCCH, can be falsified by a particular experimental setup. This claim is incorrect and the cause of the error appears to be a confusion over where and when a collapse can be assumed to occur.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1707.01346

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This is a brief comment on the paper "Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness" by Shan Yu and Danko Nikolic [1]. Yu and Nikolic argue that the "consciousness causes collapse hypothesis" interpretation of quantum mechanics, or CCCH, can be falsified by a particular experimental setup. This claim is incorrect and the cause of the error appears to be a confusion over where and when a collapse can be assumed to occur.
In this paper we examine some proposals to disprove the hypothesis that the interaction between mind and matter causes the collapse of the wave function, showing that such proposals are fundamentally flawed. We then describe a general experimental setup retaining the key features of the ones examined, and show that even a more general case is inadequate to disprove the mind-matter collapse hypothesis. Finally, we use our setup provided to argue that, under some reasonable assumptions about consciousness, such hypothesis is unfalsifiable.
Metaphysical underdetermination arises when we are not able to decide, by purely theoretical criteria, between competing interpretations of scientific theories with different metaphysical commitments. This is the case in which non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) founds itself in. Among several available interpretations, there is the interpretation which states that the interaction with the conscious mind of a human observer causes a change in the dynamics of quantum objects undergoing from indefinite to definite states. This is, in a nutshell, the received view of the consciousness causes the collapse hypothesis (CCCH), which is the basis for a set of interpretations known as subjectivistic interpretations of QM. Here we propose a further distinction between three levels of metaphysical underdetermination within the discussion related to the interpretations of QM: the first level, described above, concerns the general framework of interpretations of QM (where CCCH is a option among several others, and which is not addressed here); the second one emerges within a particular set of interpretations (namely, CCCH), and the third one from two possible approaches to a particular branch of this set of interpretations. We suggest breaking the last two using metaphysical arguments. As a general result, we have been able to rule out the dualist approach of CCCH (though we cannot rule it out empirically) and to realize that the only viable phenomenological approach to CCCH is the eidetic one.
It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that quantum mechanics explains the emergence of consciousness in the brain. Here we formulated several predictions that follow from this hypothetical relationship and that can be empirically tested. Some of the experimental results that are already available suggest falsification of the first hypothesis. Thus, the suggested link between human consciousness and collapse of wave function does not seem viable. We discuss the constraints implied by the existing evidence on the role that the human observer may play for quantum mechanics and the role that quantum mechanics may play in the observer's consciousness.