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The physicist inside the ambiguous room: an argument against the need of consciousness in the quantum mechanical measurement process

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to invalidate the hypothesis that human consciousness is necessary in the quantum measurement process. In order to achieve this target, I propose a considerable modification of the Schrödinger’s cat and the Dead-Alive Physicist thought experiments, called “PIAR”, short for “Physicist Inside the Ambiguous Room”. A specific strategy has enabled me to plan the experiment in such a way as to logically justify the inconsistency of the above hypothesis and to oblige its supporters to rely on an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics in which a real world of phenomena exists independently of our conscious mind and where observers play no special role. Moreover, the description of the measurement apparatus will be complete, in the sense that the experiment, given that it includes also the experimenter, will begin and end exclusively within a sealed room. Hence, my analysis will provide a logical explanation of the relationship between the observer and the objects of her/his experimental observation; this and a few other implications will be discussed in the fourth section and in the conclusions.

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Notes

  1. There are two main theses arguing that consciousness and quantum mechanical measurement are connected to each other: one thesis (von Neumann, London and Bauer, Wigner, Stapp; see refs 3–5 and 22) holds that the observer’s consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function, thus claiming to complete the quantum-to-classical transition, while the other thesis (Penrose; Penrose and Hameroff; see refs 18–21 ) aims at demonstrating the opposite, i.e. that consciousness emerges from the so called “Orchestrated Objective Reduction”.

  2. We don’t know how our consciousness works and do not have any idea of its nature. Nonetheless we are undoubtedly certain to possess it as the intimate and most familiar of our experiences. In general, consciousness is defined as the faculty that allows a human subject to be aware of her/his self and of her/his mental activities, as well as the faculty to learn from the perception of external events to which these activities are directed. Leading contemporary scientists in the field [28,29,30,31,32,33] have tried to lay the foundations for a science of consciousness, but none of them has yet been able to boast a promising theoretical approach. The Australian philosopher of the mind David J. Chalmers [34] argues that, to open a window towards the understanding of consciousness, it would be required to solve the so called “difficult problem”, consisting in finding a correlation between the functional mechanisms engendered by the neural activity of the brain and conscious experience, i.e. the phenomenon that allows the owner of that brain to feel specific effects in the first person.

    .

  3. In this paper, the pronouns ‘he’, ‘him’, etc. referred to the physicist P are used in a neutral sense, i.e. regardless to the sex.

  4. For simplicity and also in order to avoid involvement in the complex field of neuroscience, the time you can claim for the emergence of P’s consciousness is here fixed at 3:00 PM. However, note that, even if one insisted on appealing to neuroscience and objected that the emergence of P’s consciousness occurs gradually, we would reply that, in parallel, also P’s perception/measurement of NR/SR, i.e. the bell ringing/not ringing, will occur gradually; in other words, both the events will become, concomitantly, more and more vivid over a given time interval.

  5. Wigner’s friend, here called “F”, is a physicist left alone inside a laboratory with the task of checking attentively whether or not a detector has emitted a flash (has registered the arrival of a photon or not). Wigner is waiting outside and suspects that F (as well as all other human beings) may have weird perceptions and be in the superposition of macroscopically distinct states |F has perceived a flash> + |F has not perceived a flash>. Finally, Wigner enters the lab and asks F whether or not he perceived a flash. His reply (yes or no) should remove any doubt as to whether the wave-function collapse has occurred. However, Wigner will question whether it is acceptable or not to establish that the collapse into one only of the two possible alternatives is determined by his action (his request and reception of an unambiguous answer). He poses this question since his initial way of interpreting the state of the system gives rise to a rather embarrassing paradox, from which he has three possible ways of escape: (1) accept a relative form of solipsism, in the sense that he believes to be, among all living creatures, the only one who has unambiguous perceptions, (2) assume that QM is an incomplete theory, (3) assume that QM is not applicable to human beings; conclusively, he refutes solipsism and, being a firm supporter of QM completeness, opts for the last solution, assuming that there are beings, at least human beings, endowed with consciousness that constitutes an ultimate reality and plays an active role in determining the measurement process by rules that are not susceptible to scientific description.

  6. It can be observed that P’s consciousness and P’s perception of the outcome NR are two compatible events, i.e. the occurrence of one of them does not exclude the occurrence of the other and they can take place at the same time (more precisely, in our experiment P undergoes the two events C and NR in unison).

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Acknowledgements

My special gratitude goes to the late GianCarlo Ghirardi Professor Emeritus of Physics, Università di Trieste, for his help in clarifying several questions; I am very indebted to Carlo Rovelli Professor of Physics, Université de Aix-Marseille, for the suggestions that helped me carry out this thought experiment; my sincere thanks go to Art Hobson Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Arkansas, Livio Triolo Professor (retired) of Mathematical Physics, Università Tor Vergata di Roma, Gianni Battimelli Professor (retired) of Physics, Università La Sapienza di Roma, for their useful advice in different stages of this work. Finally, I send an exceptional thanks to my wife Susan Jane Beswick for her scrupulous control of the English language of the text.-.

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    Carlo Roselli

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Roselli, C. The physicist inside the ambiguous room: an argument against the need of consciousness in the quantum mechanical measurement process. Found Phys 52, 49 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-022-00563-z

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