Laudisa, Federico
(2025)
Between Myth and History: von Neumann on Consciousness in Quantum Mechanics.
[Preprint]
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von Neumann on consciousness in QM_copy for Pitts archive.pdf
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Abstract
The von Neumann attitude on such a deep interpretational question as the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented. The large majority of the subsequent literature ascribed to von Neumann a radical view, according to which not only the collapse was in itself a truly physical process, but also the only way to accomodate it within a quantum description of a typical measurement was the introduction of human consciousness as a kind of ‘causal’ factor. Inspired by the work of reconstruction pursued by the phenomenological reading of the London-Bauer approach, started by Steven French more than twenty years ago, the account I propose substantiates a significantly more cautious attitude by von Neumann: the time seems then ripe to tell a more balanced story on the relation between the notion of consciousness and the foundations of quantum mechanics in the work of the first scientist – János von Neumann – who explicitly and rigorously addressed the implication of a really universal formulation of quantum physics.
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