Physicist: No connection.
The idea that consciousness, or observation, can affect the physical world around us is called the “Copenhagen Interpretation”. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, as long as there is no consciousness observing a system (a system of particles, planets, light, McNuggets™, etc.), then the system will evolve in time according to the rules of quantum mechanics (waves and super-positions and whatnot). However, the moment that a conscious observer observes the system it suddenly stops obeying the laws of QM and, rather than being in a superposition of states, snaps to one state. Essentially, the act of observation creates a definite reality.
You’ll notice that at no time does the Observer have any control over what state they’ll observe (I’m looking at you, The Secret). This has been shown experimentally (so many times).
Just to be clear, the Copenhagen interpretation is wrong.
The Copenhagen interpretation leaves a lot of questions unanswered:
What’s consciousness?
If there’s more than one conscious observer, then who’s observation determines reality?
If you fall asleep or die, and no one observes you, is your body now in a superposition of states?
How does consciousness affect the physical world (what is the mechanism)?
How fast does the effect of the observation move? This is a good one. If you say “instant” or “faster than light”, then (for relativity based reasons) the effect can move backwards through time. If you say “at the speed of light or slower”, then different observers of the same event can create different realities.
In fact, the Copenhagen interpretation was originally introduced as a snide joke. As in, “Your theory is so stupid, that consciousness plays an active role”.
Among the physicists who bother to think about these things, the best theory is the “Many Worlds Hypothesis”. Here’s the basic idea:
Light was the first thing that clearly demonstrated super-position (being in more than one state at once). After that we saw super-position in electrons, protons and neutrons, alpha particles (helium), and even Buckyballs (also called “Buckminsterfullerene”, a molecule with 60 carbon atoms). The larger a thing is, the harder it is to do an experiment that shows super-position, but so far everything seems to be capable of being in a super-position of states.
So, extend this from “everything we’ve every been able to measure can be in a super-position of states” to “everything can be in a super-position of states”. Where “everything” includes people. Now the QM laws apply at all times, without awkward questions, exceptions, and explanations. And, even better, the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness is revealed to be: nothing.
For example: Schrodinger’s Cat.
Copenhagen: Before the box is opened the cat is in a combination of alive and dead. When the box is opened the cat is exposed to a conscious observer and the act of observing the cat forces it into only one state or the other. This one reality then goes along it’s merry way.
Many Worlds: Before the box is opened the cat is in a combination of alive and dead. When the box is opened the cat and the observer are allowed to interact and the larger system is now in a combination of cat-dead / observer-horrified and cat-alive / observer-hugcat. These two realities then goes along their merry ways.
I can’t give you a good definition for consciousness, but I can say that it doesn’t apply here.
You know, Griffiths never talks about this, as far as I remember. He’s all about the Copenhagen convention right from Chapter 1.
I think that what Griffiths is doing is using the Copenhagen convention to make the calculations easier (possible). If you don’t ignore every possible outcome that is now impossible (for you) to observe, then you might very well wear out your slide ruler.
I don’t know, you could probably do a lot of calculations with one of those giant demonstration slide rules. Also, isn’t that what Feynman was all about, including every possible path, even the ludicrous ones?
Even F-Dawg’s calculations assume that the particle is (more or less) where it is (instead of everywhere it could be), then he integrates over all possible histories. When he removes that conditional, then the discussion suddenly becomes much more philosophical.
Hmm. To fully answer this question, it seems like you’d have to respond to Penrose. OTOH, the answer wouldn’t change.
Fair enough. I didn’t quite follow the argument, but if you’re saying that Bohr believed in the “reality assumption” and that QM just can’t explain what we see, then he was wrong. Luckily for him he died before Bell’s theorem was published. If you’re saying that he believed that the complexity of a measuring device/measured object is to complex to understand, then I find that difficult to believe. If someone believes that the universe is fundamentally impossible to understand, they rarely become physicists. Meta-physicists sure, but not physicists.
There are people who believe a form of “modified Copenhagenism”, where the conscious observer is replaced with anything with enough mass. It sounds less spooky, but most of the problems remain.
The Copenhagen interpretation is not a homogenous view. This is still not generally recognized.
“Many physicists and philosophers see the reduction of the wave function as an important part of the Copenhagen interpretation. But Bohr one of the founding fathers never talked about the collapse of the wave packet. Nor did it make sense for him to do so because this would mean that one must understand the wave function as referring to something physically real. Bohr spoke of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, including the state vector or the wave function, as a symbolic representation. Bohr associated the use of a pictorial representation with what can be visualized in space and time. Quantum systems are not vizualizable because their states cannot be tracked down in space and time as classical systems’. The reason is, according to Bohr, that a quantum system has no definite kinematical or dynamical state prior to any measurement. Also the fact that the mathematical formulation of quantum states consists of imaginary numbers tells us that the state vector is not susceptible to a pictorial interpretation (CC, p. 144). Thus, the state vector is symbolic. Here “symbolic” means that the state vector’s representational function should not be taken literally but be considered a tool for the calculation of probabilities of observables.
Bohr flatly denied the ontological thesis that the subject has any direct impact on the outcome of a measurement. Hence, when he occasionally mentioned the subjective character of quantum phenomena and the difficulties of distinguishing the object from the subject in quantum mechanics, he did not think of it as a problem confined to the observation of atoms alone. For instance, he stated that already “the theory of relativity reminds us of the subjective character of all physical phenomena” (ATDN, p. 116). Rather, by referring to the subjective character of quantum phenomena he was expressing the epistemological thesis that all observations in physics are in fact context-dependent. There exists, according to Bohr, no view from nowhere in virtue of which quantum objects can be described.
Although Bohr had spoken about “disturbing the phenomena by observation,” in some of his earliest papers on complementarity, he never had in mind the observer-induced collapse of the wave packet. Later he always talked about the interaction between the object and the measurement apparatus which was taken to be completely objective. Thus, Schrödinger’s Cat did not pose any riddle to Bohr. The cat would be dead or alive long before we open the box to find out. What Bohr claimed was, however, that the state of the object and the state of the instrument are dynamically inseparable during the interaction. Moreover, the atomic object does not posses any state separate from the one it manifests at the end of the interaction because the measuring instrument establishes the necessary conditions under which it makes sense to use the state concept. It was the same analysis that Bohr applied in answering the challenge of the EPR-paper.”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
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Now I’m not a physicist, but my understanding of the need for observation in the Copenhagen interpretation was a result of the small scale of interactions being dealt with in quantum mechanical systems. In order for an observer to observe the state of a quantum mechanical system, a photon will have to interact with the system, fundamentally altering the system. It is the photonic interaction that causes the waveform to collapse into one state or another.
Is this not correct?
You may be thinking of the uncertainty principle. A better experiment to see collapse through is the “double slit experiment” (that thing demonstrates freaking everything). It turns out that there’s nothing special about photon interaction. In fact, if the interaction stays isolated, then the whole thing (including the results of the interaction) will still be in a super-position of states (uncollapsed).
I met a guy with a PHD in Physics who actually believed that the universe didn’t exist until somebody looked/observed it. *face palm* In QM scientists often use the term ‘observed’ but what is meant is some condition that forces the state of something to be resolved (e.g. it hits something and the wave collapses). It doesn’t mean observed by intelligence, necessarily.