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In quantum mechanics, "observation" is nearly synonymous with quantum measurement. The quantum mechanical observer is intimately tied to the observer effect. There are a large number of interpretations regarding the specific nature of the observer in quantum mechanics, but they mainly come in two distinct categories.

See Experimental Evidence Indicative of Non-Physical Minds

=Debate Overview=

The first category is those views that argue observers are simply measurement devices and physical particles. The second category within the interpretations of quantum mechanics is that consciousness causes collapse of the wave function. In simple terms, the first group argues that both conscious and unconscious phenomena can act as an observer for a measurement. The second group argues that observers are always conscious and never unconscious. There is credible peer-reviewed research that backs the interpretations of both viewpoints. Given that the second view, consciousness causes collapse, is more counter-intuitive, an extensive explanation will be provided below.

=Von Neumann's Ontology of Mind=

The Copenhagen interpretation is the first hypothesis that gave mind status as a real thing in physics. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, physical systems generally do not have definite properties prior to being measured, and quantum mechanics can only predict the probability distribution of a given measurement's possible results. The act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement due to a change in our knowledge about the system. This feature is known as wave function collapse. The mind here is defined in terms of John von Neumann’s formulation of the mind:

"'In his discussion of the measurement problem, von Neumann then distinguished between (i) the system actually observed; (ii) the measuring instrument; and (iii) the actual observer. He argues that during a measurement the actual observer gets a subjective perception of what is going on that has a non-physical nature, which distinguishes it from the observed object and the measuring instrument. [...] An important consequence of von Neumann’s solution to the measurement problem is that a type 1-process takes place only in the presence of the observer’s consciousness.'"

In other words, minds are "non-physical" entities that act as observers in collapsing the wave function, and the wave function only collapses in the presence of conscious observations. The measurement device and that which is measured are entangled as a single quantum system, in Von Neumann's view, so there is no observer present to collapse the wave function without a non-physical consciousness present.

Refinement By Dr. Kafatos
This position is still argued in academic journals today. For example, Dr. Menos C. Kafatos, a physics Ph.D. from M.I.T, made this argument in 2016:

“Non-locality is an incontrovertible and significant quantum phenomenon that presents a totally different paradigm than local, classical reality. [...] Although we agree with the basic approach of the role of the mind in the Copenhagen Interpretation and its Orthodox refinement by von Neumann, we have shown here that the issues are more complicated when quantum eraser non-locality enters the picture as collapse occurs without an act of observation by a local observer [i.e across time in addition to space]; rather through these apparent retrocausal, quantum eraser experiments, which imply the availability of information outside of space-time and which are consistent with theoretically and experimentally established quantum non-locality."

"[Retrocausality, therefore, ...] implies that there is a ‘Conscious Observer’, who is able to evaluate and interpret and differentiate the structured information content from ‘random information’. And since this Conscious Observer is able to interpret in a time-independent way [...] the Conscious Observer has to be outside space-time, i.e., non-local."

So, the Von Neumann definition, Dr. Kafatos argues, must also be amended to include this: conscious observers are non-physical, non-local, and outside of space-time.

=Notable Physicists' Views=

The above view, while very counter-intuitive, is a prevalent viewpoint among well-respected members of the scientific community. It is taken much more seriously than its critics would like to advertise. We will cite several other notable examples, while also covering the experimental data which justifies the positions they hold.

The Cosmic Double-Slit Experiement
The Cosmic Double-Slit Experiment is a Gedanken experiment proposed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. J. A. Wheeler. In brief, this is a classic double-slit experiment, but it is done using a distant quasar as the light source. The quasar is hidden behind a black hole, which acts as the ‘two slits’ dividing the source of the light. As light bends around the black hole, we see two crescents of light on either side. This light is then collected by scientists here on earth. Tim Folger - a science writer who won the 2007 AIP Science Writing Award - relays the important points of Dr. J. A. Wheeler’s experiment in this way:

"By the time the astronomers decide which measurement to make — whether to pin down the photon to one definite route or to have it follow both paths simultaneously — the photon could have already journeyed for billions of years, long before life appeared on Earth. The measurements made now, says Wheeler, determine the photons’ past. In one case the astronomers create a past in which a photon took both possible routes from the quasar to Earth. Alternatively, they retroactively force the photon onto one straight trail toward their detector, even though the photon began its jaunt long before any detectors existed. It would be tempting to dismiss Wheeler's thought experiment as a curious idea, except for one thing: It has been demonstrated in a laboratory."

Experiments conducted in 2007 by French scientists confirmed this is precisely what happens: “We report an almost ideal realization of that [Wheeler] Gedanken experiment with single photons allowing unambiguous which-way measurements. The choice between open and closed configurations, made by a quantum random number generator, is relativistically separated from the entry of the photon into the interferometer.” Also, an Italian team in 2017, "led by Francesco Vedovato from the Università Degli Studi di Padova performed an elegant variation of Wheeler’s original concept by firing a pulsed laser into a beam splitter which directed the light to satellites in low Earth orbit. These reflected the light back to Earth, with the choice to activate a second beam splitter made by the team while the light was in transit – much like the light from Wheeler’s hypothetical quasar.”

A team of Physicists also did an experiment in 2013 where they successfully entangled photons which never co-existed, proving timelike entanglement or retrocausality under a different set of conditions: “The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted."

"'What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter. Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”"

Based upon the above Gedanken, Dr. Wheeler developed a model he called the Participatory Anthropic Universe. It was summed up by Dr. Robert Dicke, an American astronomer and physicist with a Ph.D. in nuclear physics (and an Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University for 10+ years) who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, cosmology, and gravity described it in this way:

"“If you want an observer around, and if you want life, you need heavy elements. To make heavy elements out of hydrogen, you need thermonuclear combustion. To have thermonuclear combustion, you need a time of cooking in a star of several billion years. In order to stretch out several billion years in its time dimension, the universe, according to general relativity, must be several years across in its space dimensions. So why is the universe as big as it is? Because we are here!”" JA Wheeler also said that “Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously the view that the universe would be nothing without observership as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity" (Wheeler 1994, p. 39). [He then] comments on observership, referring to the views of Bohr and Wigner who advocated that observation and measurement are complete when they enter consciousness of an observer and then can be communicated to another observer in a plain language.”

Objection: Micro-Macro Barrier
The objection often raised with the above view is that the world of quantum phenomenon is probabilistic and removed from our normal experience of the world, but the macro world - the world of large things - does not operate based upon the same rules. There is a barrier, and things "up here" operate on classical principles.

Rebuttal: Experimental Evidence
This is not the case. There are are several ongoing efforts which are pushing quantum boundary upwards into the macro world. In 2012 researchers observed "quantum superposition in molecules containing around 5000 protons, 5000 neutrons and 5000 electrons." They also predicted that "wave-particle duality and quantum superpositions must also occur for macroscopic objects such as viruses, cells and even baseballs.”

In 2019, Armin Shayeghi, at the University of Vienna, "demonstrated quantum interference in molecules of gramicidin, a natural antibiotic made up of 15 amino acids.” In Quantum terms, these are macro objects, and “because all objects are fundamentally quantum in nature, [...] in principle, macroscopic objects should show this kind of wave-particle duality too, given a sensitive enough experiment. Physicists haven’t yet devised a way to measure the wavelike nature of very large objects, but their ambition in this respect has been steadily increasing.” These effort to create sensitive enough instruments has been very successful, and we have detected entanglement and other quantum effects "in large systems including clouds of atoms, quantum drums, wires, and etched silicon chips."

So, the micro-macro barrier is receding year after year. The barrier is methodological and not ontological. We don’t have the methods to show quantum effects at very large scales yet, but every time our methodology improves, measurable quantum effects rise to larger and larger macro objects.

QBism
Dr. Christopher Fuchs, a PhD and Professor of Physics in the College of Science and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts has developed a model called QBism:

“Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism as Fuchs now calls it, solves many of quantum theory’s deepest mysteries. [...] A quantum particle can be in a range of possible states. When an observer makes a measurement, she instantaneously ‘collapses’ the wave function into one possible state. QBism argues that this collapse isn’t mysterious.”

“Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) [...] treats the wave function as a description of a single observer’s subjective knowledge[, knowledge which does not need to be consistent between two observers - each observer has their own wave-function]. It resolves all of the quantum paradoxes, but at the not insignificant cost of anything we might call ‘reality.’ Then again, maybe that’s what quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us all along — that a single objective reality is an illusion.”

Many Minds
Dr. Matthew Donald has a PhD in Mathematics, or more specifically, a PhD in the mathematical models in quantum field theory. He is currently residing at Cambridge University as a professor. His Many Minds hypotheses is similar:

“In order to turn the many-minds idea into a fully-developed formalism for the interpretation of quantum theory, it is necessary to step back from those simple models, and look afresh at the relationship between mind and brain. In the classical mind-body problem, body seems sufficient to explain all behaviour. Mind therefore seems epiphenomenal, or even superfluous. However quantum theory calls into question the definiteness of every physical object. So perhaps after all mind is fundamental and it is the mind which determines the body.”

“Observations are relative to individual observers. ‘Worlds’ are distinguished at the level of the minds of individual observers. Alice has her observations and Bob has his. Avoiding solipsism requires that we assign consciousness (or reality) to everyone we could meet who is sufficiently similar to ourselves. So Alice should assign reality to each of Bob's possible futures, and, by symmetry, to each of her own.”

Psychophysical Paralellism
Rajat K. Pradhan has an MA in Physics and does physics research at Utkal University. He argues that the model of Psychophysical Parallelism is the best explaination:

“The psychophysical interpretation then explains the emergence of a real physical world from the probabilistic quantum world as arising from the interaction of the conscious observer with the latter. The mental states of the observer are the past-directed bras which are compared with what is received by the brain through the sensory apparata in a measurement, and accordingly the system properties are ascertained.”

“Quantum non-locality in all situations can be explained as arising from the observer’s inference based on previous knowledge of correlations between constituent subsystems of the whole system. The paradoxes cease to be paradoxes once the knowledge of the conscious observer is taken into account as an element of Reality.”

“In general, we must agree upon the fact that a measurement is completed only upon the observation of the results and not before that. Otherwise, we have ‘measurements with unknown results’ or ‘unobserved measurements’ which serve no meaningful purpose whatsoever. Even when the results in an experiment are null or inconclusive, such nullity or inconclusiveness must be known by an observation of the apparata. Thus, if the system-apparata (matter- matter) interaction constitutes the objective half of the measurement process, then the apparata-observer (matter-mind) interaction leading to the knowledge of the system state may be said to be the subjective half.”

“The conscious observer (subject) here may be identified with the ‘abstract ego’ of, since the entire physical universe including the physical body of the observer is in the object part of the bifurcation [...] While doing science objectively, we do always strive to keep ourselves, i.e. the observers, out of the scheme, which naturally presupposes a non-physical or, at the very least, a non-material (hence called ‘abstract’ by von Neumann) subjective ego that actually cognizes everything.”

Relational Quantum Mechanics
“According to Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM), there are no absolute—that is, observer-independent—physical quantities. Instead, all physical quantities—the entire physical world—are relative to the observer, in a way analogous to motion. This is motivated by the fact that, according to quantum theory, different observers can account differently for the same sequence of events. Consequently, each observer is inferred to ‘inhabit’ its own physical world, as defined by the context of its own observations.”

=Objection: Hidden-Variables=

We just don’t know enough yet about space-like and time-like entanglement. We will find hidden-variables to explain the things we see in Quantum Mechanics without appealing to various kinds of non-local causality.

Kochen–Specker Theorem
This is a "basic and fundamental 50-year-old non-existence result affecting the foundations of quantum mechanics, demonstrating the impossibility of consistently assigning truth values to certain quantum propositions, thereby strongly implying the lack of any meaningful notion of ‘quantum realism’. Indeed the Kochen–Specker theorem is typically interpreted in terms of requiring ‘contextuality’ (roughly speaking, context-dependent ‘reality’) in quantum physics.”

Bell's Inequality
This was first tackled by experiments violating Bell’s inequality. “Some 40 years ago the physicist John Bell predicted that many hidden-variables theories would be ruled out if a certain experimental inequality were violated – known as ‘Bell’s inequality.” Since this time many experiments "have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously.”

Legget's Inequality
In 2003, Sir Anthony James Legget - a professor of physics at the University of Illinois - proposed an experiment that relies on physical realism itself more directly and less on locality. This is called ‘Legget’s inequality.’ If this could be violated, it would show that a hidden-variables hypothesis is entirely untenable, according to Legget:

"“Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. [...] They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”"

So, the idea that hidden variables will someday debunk non-local causation or time-like entanglement aren’t tenable. Several lines of experimental data indicate that non-local causation - entangled with the conscious observer - is a fact.

=Additional Direct Experimental Evidence=

The 2012 Physics Essays Publication contains a study conducted by six academics with various backgrounds. It revealed that trained meditators with focused minds can have effects on quantum objects in a double-slit experiment, lending weight and credibility to the ‘consciousness causes wave-function collapse’ model of Quantum Mechanics.

"“Variables including temperature, vibration, and signal drift were also tested, and no spurious influences were identified. By contrast, factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.”"

Smile Mold
If minds are fundamentally non-physical and non-local, we might expect that organisms without a central nervous system would show cognitive behaviors. Slime mold has no central nervous system, but has been shown in a laboratory environment to displays cognitive behaviors: “These results strongly suggest that, like humans, Physarum doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to the options that are available to it. Instead, it compares its alternatives.”

"'What that means, according to Dussutour [...] is that a slime mold can learn — and it can keep that knowledge during dormancy, despite the extensive physical and biochemical changes in the cells that accompany that transformation. Being able to remember where to find food is a useful skill for a slime mold to have in the wild, because its environment can be treacherous. [...] More fundamentally, she said, this result also means that there is such a thing as ‘primitive cognition,’ a form of cognition that is not restricted to organisms with a brain.”"

Single Celled Life
We might expect that is mind is fundamentally non-physical and non-local, that even organisms as small as single cells might have cognitive behaviors without relying on complex brain structures or even a central nervous system.

Physarum polycephalum
“For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an organism devoid of a nervous system is capable of learning. A team from the Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CNRS/Université Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier) has succeeded in showing that a single-celled organism, the protist Physarum polycephalum, is capable of a type of learning called habituation. This discovery throws light on the origins of learning ability during evolution, even before the appearance of a nervous system and brain.”

Amoeba Proteus
“Associative memory is the main type of learning by which complex organisms endowed with evolved nervous systems respond efficiently to certain environmental stimuli. It has been found in different multicellular species, from cephalopods to humans, but never in individual cells. Here we describe a motility pattern consistent with associative conditioned behavior in the microorganism Amoeba proteus.”

Past Life Memory Research
We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could come (or should come) from somewhere else before birth rather than arising in the womb for the first time. Research has been done on this topic.

Dr. Ian Stevenson & Past Life Memories
“Stevenson, an expert on psychosomatic medicine, suspected strong emotions are related to a child’s retention of past-life memories. Traumatic deaths, he thought, leave an emotional imprint. Indeed, most of the children he studied claimed that they had met a violent end previously. There was also a gap of a few years between lives; reincarnation is never immediate. And for the most part, souls seemed to stay local. That's to say, the ‘previous personality’ often lived in a distant village, but not quite so far away as to require a passport.”

Dr. Jim Tucker & Past Life Memories in North America
"For the past 20 years, Dr. Jim Tucker, now the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, has focused mainly on cases found in the United States. His most recent book Return to Life offers accounts of very strong American cases of young children who remember previous lives. In this book, Dr. Tucker writes about the now well-known cases of James Leininger, a young boy who had verifiable past-life memories of being a WWII pilot, and Ryan Hammond, who had verifiable memories of being a Hollywood extra and talent agent.”

Dr. Parnia's Research
We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could acquire knowledge non-physically and non-locally when the brain has completely shut off and has no access to the five senses.

Dr. Parnia & Patients with no brain activity: “Conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped. This is significant since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with ‘real’ events when the heart isn’t beating. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.”

Dr. Bruce Greyson's Research
“There are four lines of evidence to explore [which support the mind being non-physical]. Number one is the unexplained recovery of consciousness for people who’ve been unconscious for prolonged periods of time moments or days before their death. Number two is a complex consciousness in people with minimal brain tissue. Number three is surprisingly complex consciousness in near-death experiencers when the brain is not functioning or functions at a diminished level, and number four; young children who recall details of a past life.”

Prof. Daryl Bem’s Psi Research
We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could acquire knowledge non-physically and non-locally, under certain conditions.

“All but one of the nine experiments confirmed the hypothesis that psi exists. The odds against the combined results being due to chance or statistical flukes are about 74 billion to 1, according to Bem.”

=Criticism=

Critics of the special role of the observer also point out that observers can themselves be observed, leading to paradoxes such as that of Wigner's friend; and that it is not clear how much consciousness is required ("Was the wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some highly qualified measurer—with a PhD?" ). Although, this would not be problem for the formalities developed under Many Minds, QBism, Relational Quatum Mechanics, and Psychophysical Paralellism, due to the fact that two observer's universes or worlds need not agree with each other: first, Wigner's friend can collapse the wave-function in his perceptual-universe, and later, Wigner can collapse the wave-function in his perceptual-universe.

=See also=
 * Observer (physics)
 * Observer effect (physics)
 * Measurement in quantum mechanics

=References=

=External links=
 * The Role of the Observer in Quantum Physics

Category:Concepts in physics Category:Quantum mechanics