creators_name: Butterfield, Jeremy
type: pittpreprint
datestamp: 2001-03-09
lastmod: 2010-10-07 15:10:08
metadata_visibility: show
title: Quantum Curiosities of Psychophysics
subjects: quantum-mechanics
subjects: reductionism-holism
full_text_status: public
keywords: measurement problem, collapse of the wave packet, physicalism, reductionism, supervenience, Wigner, Stapp
abstract: I survey some of these connections between 'collapse solutions' to the measurement problem, and the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism. I have two main conclusions. (1) These solutions, though compatible with physicalism, can involve a very different conception of the physical from what most philosophers and neuroscientists expect. (2) The 'Wigner-Stapp' solution gives a real-life example of a problem, which metaphysical discussions of physicalism have seen only in the abstract: the problem that because psycho-physical correlation is a `two-way street', the strategy of defining physicalism in terms of supervenience threatens to be too weak. That is, the precise definition can be satisfied, even while intuitively physicalism is false. A version of the paper has appeared in "Consciousness and Human Identity", ed. John Cornwell, OUP 1997, pp. 122-159. 
date: 1997-05
date_type: published
citation: Butterfield, Jeremy (1997) Quantum Curiosities of Psychophysics. [Preprint]
document_url: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/193/1/QMCURIOFEB01.PDF