Why does Conciousness collapse the wave function? Let's be clear on something, the collapse of the wave function of consciousness is not an objective phenomenon; A collapse caused by consciousness is one which governs our perception. The world, the objective reality outside of the subjective experience is a world which exists independantly of the human being, indeed any creature that might have a complex awareness and even structural consciousness. The world outside has never been seen by any living organism on Earth. The reason why is because the subjective experience we all come to agree on, like the asymptotic nature of time, the presence of spatially-seperated objects, the colour of grass the feeling and texture of things upon touch are all chemical inbalances inside our craniums. These signals are mostly electrical signals that are transported by neural transmitters that become inevitably intercepted by the common intelligence that is inside us. Unaware of this common subjective intelligence, the mind completely independant of will somehow measures two dimensional images and recasts them into the three dimensional phenomenon we call reality and experience. So if our observations are never really present in the world, as an objective feature of the material and the corporeal, what is it we are measuring, if indeed it is all just ''imprint'' or for a better word, a ''holograph'' of the outside world? Arguably, there are many implications. One being that which reality is the true reality? Well, arguably, relative to the human, the only reality which should make sense is the one we can measure directly. This is not only a matter of relativity but a matter of fact. The world we ''see'' is afterall, not the world ''out there''. Why Should we Beleive in a Wave Function of Conscious Possibilities? There are some major reasons why we should believe in a wave function governing choice. Note from now on, when I infer the use of ''choice'' I mean it to mean a conscious act or decision as it so happens, that determinism and choice do not necesserily clash. The act of choice can lye as a miscondrued action independant of any physical ties, rules or boundaries. Again, the reason is because of the sphere of perception; not only are electrical signals which dominate our sense of perception, but choice is also a matter of the human senses. We can believe readily in the illusion that somehow we have a choice, when really the ability to believe such a thing has been created most likely from evolution, a mind desperately trying to conceive the world around it to the best of it's abilities. A recent topic I discussed, but not unrelated to consciousness, was the matter of time and perception. Physics clearly states (and without delving into this part too deeply) that there is no past or future, not in the real objective sense. Subjectively, we order events and memorize them in such a way that the human mind believes there is such a thing. The only time which exists now, is the present time and even in the passing moments afterwards and the murky moments that past before us. There is only one ''present moment which defines all of the universe.'' The present moment is not an artefact which states there is a present moment existing in the future which sits side by side our present moment in the present, this would contradict the relativity of simultaneity. Instead, the future is paradoxically happening in it's own frame of reference. In much the same sense and arguements brought forward about choice and the ability to think we have an indeterministic choice, is the same paradox of time. The mind, a conscious one simply could not exist in a world were it did not consider the illusory concepts of a past and expecting a future to occur. For some inherent reason, the ability to have consciousness is the ability to erreneously discern such a possibility. Choice and the order of events inside our bubble of perception are all parts of an finely interconnected woven fabric which partially resembles the world outside. But saying that consciousness cannot exist within quantum mechanics is almost like saying that consciousness does not really exist within time or space. Such a seperation may prove to be one of the biggest fallacies of modern quantum science and relativity. There is every liklihood that consciousness and our perception follows many probabilistic natures that we often associate to matter in the objective world. One of these properties is wave function, a field itself which may govern every aspect of choice, the acts of thought or thinking. To have a thought under this model for instance, would require a collapse of the wave function. Is it so hard to imagine? Scientists today often attribute the state vector (the condition in which the wave function that can describe the entire state of something) even over the entire universe. The first scientist to propose a type of universal wave function was Hugh Everett the third. If consciousness is not outside of quantum mechanics completely (meaning that the ability to have consciousness is a universally self-contained object) then the wave function describing everything in the universe also attributes those probabilities internally as well as externally. The only way a mind could not be seperate to the universe is if it was an absolute copy of the universe at large. Now as far as we know, consciousness is very good at the ability to ''recreate'' the universe inside this sphere of perception, but I would believe that almost any scientist would agree with me it is hardly an exact copy. No subsystem can model precisely the larger system it is made of. Because of this, it stands to reason on this mathematical level alone that consciousness is not seperate of the universe. It exists within the universe as not being an exact copy. Why is Wigners Friend Bunk? I won't explain this in large detail, but Wigners friend assumes that consciousness objectively collapses the wave function. In my model, the wave function governs the internal world of perception, not the other way around, however, if the ability to have choices, the acts of choice, thinking and the acts of thinking are all due to superpositioning principles and collapses of the wave function, then our world inside can be modelled as an analog to the wave function which effects the ordinary quantum and atomic and semi-classical macroscopic objects of the world outside. Wigners Friend is too decisive on it's treating of consciousness directly to collapses in the objective sense, whereas I believe we don't collapse the state of a system at all. We may effect what we see because the information outside is what is telling us how it is, by showing us these signals and then effecting the wave function inside the perception of the human. I have already given a short but yet straight to the point mathematical overline of how choice, determinism and collapses upon conscious decisions arise from a wave function here http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=111296 - I posted it in psuedoscience, but I should have maybe posted it in speculations.
There is one more problem treating consciousness outside of quantum mechanics, since I mentioned that here. I do have a thread open on that question, but this thread is fundamentally different in that it tackles why consciousness collapses the wave function (maybe the more appropriate term science should take is ''why consciousness collapses a wave function of descriptions Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! '') -- Time is part of the manifold outside by current theoretical suggestions. In Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, time is actually an artefact of clocks. Clocks in reality, in nature, do not exist. They are constructs of the human as a measurement over the boundaries of past, present and that of the future. 1 second maybe made in a humans present moment (we can cut time down to smaller values, but our brains can't really adjust to increasingly smaller and smaller values that are greater that fractions of a second). Keeping this all in mind, (mind the pun) lol, time is in fact not only a construction of men who wanted to know the ability to measure their past, present and future experiences, but knowing that physics does not even have a boundary of time makes it suspicious that time may even exist independantly at all. Time is a highly subjective phenomenon. It only becomes a mechanical phenomenon when we consider objects like clocks which we have created to measure of our experiences, and experiences are if the OP is right, not part of the objective in it's entirity. As was explained, past and future sandwiches the present so that the human mind can consciously become aware. In doing so, the human mind can have a memory. If our brains believed the world was simply stuck in an eternal present, though (our perceptions are completely finite in the long run) how can we understand how to catalogue the passing events as they unfolded? Our memory would by-pass quickly into the non-sensible as it tried to fathom why a certain event happened without understanding some history to it, it's ultimate origins over time.
Perhaps this is a reasoning that maybe Einstein's special theory is ever-so-slightly faulty, by assuming that time is an objective feature in light of using clocks to measure it, rather than assuming that clocks are measuring a subjective feature.
Oh before one even mentions the known terminologies of clocks, it is believed we have atomic clocks. Again, the faulty premise is that an atom actually has a history defined as a past, present and future. Not only that, but something can observe an atom which is ripe to radiate energy and halt the process dead in its tracks. This is called the Zeno effect. In much the same light, random processes are often attributed by science by saying that radiating atoms are proof of randomness. The zeno effect can change that view considerably, making a system of atomic systems completely deterministic.
No need for alarm. For some quirky reason I just found it better to reverse the order of the chosen paragraph here. If you want to call such a situation that's totally free of interpretation and representation a "world" (quote below). Although these efforts that Greene alludes to would arguably just be more revisable conceptions ascribed to the empirical world rather than a transcendent one, these physicists may someday strip space and time away from their abstract model as much as Kant did his level of noumena or things in themselves. That makes for a circumstance whose distinct fundamental components would be interpenetrating each other due to a lack of spatial and temporal separation -- hardly a "world" in any conventional sense! (Perhaps resolves how their epiphenomena could seem to affect each other in non-local ways, though). Brian Greene . . . "Today's scientists seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) are convinced that we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic 'realm' that is itself devoid of time and space." --The Time We Thought We Knew, NYT, 2003 Well, like Kant I'd still call the empirical / phenomenal world of outer sense the relevant version of an objective world, and the natural world, etc. It may be a representation but it's also an interpersonal one. Tom: "Did anyone else also see and hear that aircraft go by overhead?" Teacher: "Yes, everyone on this field-trip did, you ceaselessly fixated with the trivial, vexing boy!") To any purist Kantians in the neighborhood: Granted, that other transcendent version of an external world can be used to project your practical necessities of morality and human autonomy upon, but that's even less a scientific endeavor according to your standards than it probably is from the perspective of non-Kantians. (I.e., wrong forum to discuss it).
Let me make it clear, that the wave function might just be an inherent behaviour of any system in the universe. That consciousness and the outside world equally have probability distributions in the style of quantum wave function fields.
Why is consciousness treated as the collapse? A lens seems to be the most likely reason. Lenses are designed to target quantum particles into tight areas. I would need everything eliminating before I even mentioned consciousness. Even gravity must be changed by some devices, and magnetism.
my point is that , consciousness can't collapse the wave because what the consciousness is observing is in a wave form in the first place and so is consciousness
Consciousness has nothing to do with the collapse of the wave function. The use of the word 'observer' is misleading, and misleads into all of this consciousness is required crap. ANY interaction with another wave/particle is an 'observation' and collapses the wave function. There doesn't need to be any sentient observer.
Alex It seems clear you have not understood the work. There will be two wave functions to consider, the real objective one's, then my arguement for a wave function governing consciousness. I gave arguements why consciousness may have a wave function. It would be non-physical of course, but rooted from the idea that the wave function govern absolutely every system inside the universe, in fact, it even governs itself. So if there is a wave function in the human mind, then perhaps the human being does collapse the wave function. Maybe that slurry mesh of choices you can have from a certain action may be analogous to a superpositioning principle? Maybe the fact that any thought is collected in the mind is due to a wave function collapse? Now, I have often said here at this forum that atoms makes observers, that they can easily observe each other independant of any human observer. I can link to places were I have said this, so please don't think your words were enlightening at all.
Consciousness is not required to collapse the wave function per se anyway. I am simply stating that consciousness could collapse a wave function if there is such a field which governs our ability to have choices and even conduct mental thoughts.
