A no-go theorem for the persistent reality of Wigner’s friend’s perception

Guérin, Philippe; Baumann, Veronika; Santo, Flavio Del; Brukner, Časlav

doi:10.1038/s42005-021-00589-1

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Moreover, as discussed,in ref [42] quantum mechanics itself provides further reasons to question the persistence of agents and perceptions over time, since a no-go theorem shows that in a Wigner's friend experiment we cannot assign a joint probability distribution across the observations of the friend before and after Wigner's experiment unless we give up the assumption that unitary quantum mechanics is universal or the assumption that the joint probability of the friend's perceived outcomes has a convex linear dependence on the initial state of the system qubit. It seems likely that most orthodox interpretations would wish to uphold these two assumptions, since the universality of quantum mechanics is one of the basic principles of an orthodox interpretation, and consequently they must accept that at least in some cases we can't consistently demand that observers retain the same subjective perspective over time.…”

Section: Persistence Over Timementioning

confidence: 90%

Does Science need Intersubjectivity? The Problem of Confirmation in Orthodox Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Adlam¹

2022

Preprint

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What must an interpretation of quantum mechanics do in order to be considered viable? We suggest that one vitally important criterion is the following: Any successful interpretation of quantum mechanics must explain how our empirical evidence allows us to come to know about quantum mechanics. That is, an interpretation of quantum mechanics must be able to tell a sensible story about how empirical confirmation works in the context of quantum-mechanical experiments, otherwise the whole project will be self-defeating: we cannot rationally believe an interpretation of a theory which tells us we have no good reason to believe that the theory itself is right, because our only reason for believing the interpretation is our belief that the theory is right!The 'probability problem' and the related problem of confirmation has been much-discussed in the context of the Everett interpretation [1-5], but it is evident that other interpretations which also postulate major changes to our usual ideas about the relationship between observers and reality will be vulnerable to similar objections. In this article, we will focus on the class of interpretations sometimes known as 'orthodox' interpretations [6] or alternatively 'Copenhagenish' interpretations [7]. These are interpretations which posit nothing but 'unitary dynamics to characterize the dynamical evolution of a state vector' and which 'deny that we should think of a system as having an observer-independent state.' [6] Orthodox interpretations differ from the Everett interpretation because they tell us that measurements have unique outcomes, but those outcomes are relativized to an observer. Examples of orthodox interpretations include Copenhagen interpretations [8-10], neo-Copenhagen interpretations [11-17], QBism [18], pragmatic interpretations [19] and some versions of relational quantum mechanics [20] 1 . Certain forms of the 'It from Bit' hypothesis may also fall into this category [22, 23] 2 .It has been observed that interpretations of this kind challenge the standard scientific doctrine of intersubjectivity about measurement outcomes and other macroscopic events [24-28], i.e. they imply that measurements and other macroscopic events will not typically have the same outcome for all macroscopic observers. Proponents of orthodox interpretations have historically taken a rather cavalier attitude toward this fact -for after all, every interpretation of quantum mechanics has some features which appear strange to our classical intuition, so it might seem that orthodox interpretations are no worse off than other approaches in this regard. However, what this discussion overlooks is the fact that intersubjectivity plays a vitally important role in the process of empirical confirmation, and thus the failure of intersubjectivity in orthodox interpretations means that these approaches have serious difficulties in fulfilling the crucial criterion of showing how our empirical evidence could allow us to know about quantum mechanics. This is not just a matter of learning to accept s...

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Section: Persistence Over Timementioning

confidence: 90%

Does Science need Intersubjectivity? The Problem of Confirmation in Orthodox Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Adlam¹

2022

Preprint

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“…We think that our line of research is close to some recent approaches, mainly developed outside logic. Recent research has addressed issues stemming from “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment, considering different levels of judgements (see [ 42 , 43 ], where the role of time is also considered). We further quote [ 21 ], where different levels of judgements are conceived adopting a hypothetical “internal observer” rather than a “super observer” (see Section 3.3 ).…”

Section: Perspectives and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Modal Interpretation of Quantum Spins and Its Application to Freudian Theory

Battilotti

Borozan

Grotto

2022

Entropy

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In the present paper, we aim to develop a formal quantum logic theory of the interplay between conscious and unconscious processes of the human mind, a goal that has already been envisaged in quantum cognitions; in doing so, we will show how the interplay between formal language and metalanguage allows for characterizing pure quantum states as infinite singletons: in the case of the spin observable, we obtain an equation defining a modality that is then re-interpreted as an abstract projection operator. By including a temporal parameter in the equations and by defining a modal negative operator, we derive an intuitionistic-like negation, for which the non-contradiction law is seen as an equivalent of the quantum uncertainty. Building on the psychoanalytic theory of Bi-Logic by Matte Blanco, we use modalities in interpreting the emergence of conscious representations from the unconscious one, and we demonstrate that this description fits well with Freud’s view of the role of negation in mental processes. Psychoanalysis, where affect plays a prominent role in shaping not only conscious, but also unconscious representations, is therefore seen as a suitable model to expand the domain of quantum cognition to the broader field of affective quantum cognition.

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“…of recent works [1][2][3][4][5][6] from a fast-increasing literature on the Wigner's friend experiment.…”

Section: The Planmentioning

confidence: 99%

The original Wigner's friend paradox within a realist toy model

Lostaglio,

Bowles

2021

Preprint

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A no-go theorem for the persistent reality of Wigner’s friend’s perception

Cited by 18 publications

References 41 publications

Does Science need Intersubjectivity? The Problem of Confirmation in Orthodox Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Does Science need Intersubjectivity? The Problem of Confirmation in Orthodox Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

A Modal Interpretation of Quantum Spins and Its Application to Freudian Theory

The original Wigner's friend paradox within a realist toy model

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