Abstract
An Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics given by David Albert claims that a competent observer of a superposition would be deceived when introspecting her own perceptual beliefs. A careful accounting of the belief states of the observer, together with an understanding of the linearity of operators that represent observables in quantum mechanics, shows that this claim is mistaken. A competent observer’s introspection about her perceptual belief of the measurement of a superposition cannot be a deception.
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Notes
- 1.
A huge thanks to my colleagues Reed Guy, Harvey Brown, and John Perry for helping me struggle through some of these concepts. All mistakes and misunderstandings are entirely my own, however. I would also like to thank attendees at the 2018 International Conference on Quanta and Mind for helpful comments and suggestions. Also, special thanks are due to Christopher Skokowski for advice on using LATE X.
- 2.
Note that this difference in content holds whether the content is the position of a pointer towards either ‘black’ or ‘white’ or whether the content is actual color content ‘black’ or ‘white.’ The intentional content will be fine-grained in either case.
- 3.
If the representing state did not have this fine-grainedness, then Hilda would not be capable of answering queries about the content of the perceptual state in question.
- 4.
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Skokowski, P. (2019). Introspection and Superposition. In: de Barros, J.A., Montemayor, C. (eds) Quanta and Mind. Synthese Library, vol 414. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21908-6_15
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