Abstract—The problem of devising a theory for paranormal phenomena (psi) may be separated into, first, the basic physical mechanism and second, the psychological aspects of how and when people are able to elicit psi. Observational theory addresses primarily the first aspect, the basic physical mechanism of psi. A problem is that the known types of physical interaction do not fit the existing data. The measurement problem in quantum mechanics can be used to hypothe-size an observer who adds information at the collapse of the wave function. For each random event one of the possible outcomes becomes realized as the event is being observed. The basic tenet of observational theory is: the statis-tics of single events become biased if the observer is motivated and prefers one of the possible outcomes over the other. Features of observational theory are: its predictive power, proven with re-gard to retroactive psychokinesis (PK); parsimony: the same mechanism ex-plains ESP as well as PK; fruitfulness, as there is a direct relationship with quantum mechanics; and openness to crucial experiments. The falsifiability criterion poses some problems: these are discussed in relation to Lakatos’ methodology of research programmes. Observational theory is a solution to the problem of the mediation of psi, thus providing a framework for the psychological problem of the manifesta-tion of psi. Henceforth, the observation of the outcome should be regarded as formal part of parapsychological experiments. There is reason for cautious, patient optimism about the acceptance of observational theory.
A discussion of quantum measurement theory is presented. It is argued that the quantum measurement problem consists in the failure of any formalism based on unitary evolution to describe fully the observed behaviour in measurement-like processes. It is shown that the problem is essentially concerned with the phase of the coherence between orthogonal eigenstates of an object/measuring device system. It is then proposed that the observed behaviour is fully described if the value of this phase is formally undecidable.
Quantum Measurement problem studied in Information Theory approach of systems selfdescription which exploits the information acquisition incompleteness for the arbitrary information system. The studied model of measuring system (MS) consist of measured state S environment E and observer
O processing input S signal.
O considered as the quantum object which interaction with S,E obeys to Schrodinger equation (SE). MS incomplete or restricted states for
O derived by the algebraic QM formalism which exploits Segal and
C∗-algebras. From Segal theorem for systems subalgebras it's shown that such restricted states
VO=∣Oj><Oj∣ describes the classical random 'pointer' outcomes
Oj observed by
O in the individual events. The 'preferred' basis
∣Oj> defined by
O state decoherence via
O - E interactions.