Abstract
Recently, Elio Conte has commented a paper by the present author devoted to analyze the possibility of checking experimentally whether the perceptual process can lead to the collapse of the wavefunction. Here we answer to the comments by Conte and we show that he has missed to grasp the crucial elements of our proposal. Morever, we discuss some ideas put forward by Conte concerning the occurrence of quantum superpositions of different states of consciousness and we show that they are rather vague and not cogent.
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Notes
For these researches we refer the reader to the rich bibliography of ref. [1].
A remark. The author should be more specific about the states triggering the mentioned processes and evidences by making clear, first of all, whether the stimulus is a quantum superposition of states leading to different perceptions, or a state corresponding to a unique, definite perception. In fact, the assumption that the initial state is a superposition represents the starting and basic point of our analysis and, in our opinion, is of fundamental importance for our and his analysis.
We will disregard the specific case considered at the beginning by the author, in which in the first experiment there is equal probability of getting any of the two possible perceptions and in the second there are probabilities sin2α and sin2β for the subsequent outcomes and we will pass immediately to the general case discussed by the author in which such probabilities take general values.
We make reference for the moment to the case in which after the second experiment the subject perceives A = +1.
References
Conte, E.: Int. J. Theor. Phys. doi:10.1007/s10773-014-2259-6
Ghirardi, G.C.: Phys. Lett. A 262, 1 (1999)
Esfeld, M.: Stud. His. Phil. Modern Phys. 30 B, 145 (1999)
Ghirardi, G.C., Rimini, A., Weber, T.: Phys. Rev. D 34, 470 (1986)
Adler, S.: J. Phys. A 40(2935), 13501 (2007)
Rubin, E.: Synsoplevede Figurer (1915)
Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Catalina Curceanu for calling to our attention the paper by Conte.
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Ghirardi, G. Quantum Mechanics and Perceptive Processes: A Reply to Elio Conte. Int J Theor Phys 54, 2135–2140 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-014-2421-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-014-2421-1