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Many Minds

Jeffrey Alan Barrett

Published Aug 16, 2001• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract This chapter evaluates another way of interpreting Everett's branches as describing the states of different minds in which an observer's determinate experiences and beliefs are explained by the fact that he always has a determinate mental state. In this sense, such theories might be said to predict appearances directly. It describes the efforts of Albert and Loewer in explaining how such a theory might work. This chapter also discusses Lockwood's many-minds theory and its relationship to Albert and Loewer's. Lastly, it explains the relative-fact theory and the correlations-without-correlata view.

DOI
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247431.003.0007

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Abstract This chapter evaluates another way of interpreting Everett's branches as describing the states of different minds in which an observer's determinate experiences and beliefs are explained by the fact that he always has a determinate mental state. In this sense, such theories might be said to predict appearances directly. It describes the efforts of Albert and Loewer in explaining how such a theory might work. This chapter also discusses Lockwood's many-minds theory and its relationship to Albert and Loewer's. Lastly, it explains the relative-fact theory and the correlations-without-correlata view.
This paper, together with a planned companion treating contemporary decoherence-based approaches, reviews and analyses the approaches to locality and to mind-body dualism proposed in Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics. Here we treat the explicitly mentalistic many-minds interpretation proposed by David Albert and Barry Loewer (1988). In particular, we investigate what kind of supervenience of the mind on the body is implied by Albert and Loewer's many-minds interpretation, and how the interpretation of the related "mindless hulks" problem affects the issue of locality within this interpretation. © 2013 Imprint Academic.
Abstract This chapter begins by discussing the problems encountered in interpreting Everett's assumption of the same appearances in pure wave mechanics as predicted by the standard collapse theory. The significant gaps at critical points in his exposition and the contradicting evidence of what he wanted, explain the many mutually incompatible reconstructions of Everett that apologists and critics have devised. This chapter also provides the author's interpretation of the various theories discussed in this book.
Abstract Accounts of quantum theory that bring to the fore the relationship between the system and the observer, or measuring device, include Everett’s ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation and Rovelli’s ‘Relational Quantum Mechanics’, both of which are considered in Chapter 9. The former understands the state of a system as relative to that of the observer and in Everett’s original formulation, the definite outcomes obtained through measurement were manifested via the observer’s memory sequences. The subjectivist aspect of this interpretation is made even more explicit in the so-called ‘Many Minds’ variant. Relational Quantum Mechanics likewise adopts a relational or perspectival approach to the states of the system under observation. In this chapter both approaches are considered as offering a way of aligning quantum theory with the correlationist feature of phenomenology. Both are then compared with QBism and the pros and cons of all three are considered in terms of possible avenues for developing a phenomenological form of quantum theory.
Making sense of Born's rule pα=∥Ψα∥2p_\alpha=\lVert\Psi_\alpha\rVert^2pα​=∥Ψα​∥2 with the many-worlds interpretation
This work is an attempt to justify Born's rule within the framework of the many-worlds interpretation proposed by Everett. Here, we develop a unitary model of many-minds based on the work of Albert and Loewer (Synthese 77, 195 (1988)). At the difference of the model of Albert and Loewer ours is not genuinely stochastic and dualistic and also involves some classical-like randomness based on ignorance about initial conditions of the Universe. We also compare the present method for recovering Born's rule with previous works based on Decision theory a la Deutsch Wallace and envariance \emph{a la} Zurek and found that all these approaches are strongly related to each other.
We argue that certain types of many minds (and many worlds) interpretations of quantum mechanics, e.g. Lockwood ([1996a]), Deutsch ([1985]) do not provide a coherent interpretation of the quantum mechanical probabilistic algorithm. By contrast, in Albert and Loewer's ([1988]) version of the many minds interpretation, there is a coherent interpretation of the quantum mechanical probabilities. We consider Albert and Loewer's probability interpretation in the context of Bell‐type and GHZ‐type states and argue that it implies a certain (weak) form of nonlocality.1Introduction2Albert and Loewer's interpretation3Probabilities in Lockwood's interpretation4Sets of minds and their correlations5Many minds and GHZ
In this work we investigate the problem of locality in theories inspired by Everett’s Relative State Theory. Specifically we address the Many Worlds by Deutsch, the Many Minds Theory by David Albert and Barry Loewer and the Relational Theory by Simon Saunders, and we carry out our inquiry in view of recent work by Meir Hemmo and Itamar Pitowsky. Our aim is, on the one hand, to clarify the remarkably important points which have been put forward within Hemmo and Pitowsky work on the issue of the interpretation of probability in Many Minds, on the other hand to argue against a remark on the Relational theory, stating that the analysis carried out on the Many Minds interpretation could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to Saunders’ theory.