Griffith University
Eric Cavalcanti
Griffith University
Peter Evans
The University of Queensland
Co-Investigators
Antoine Tilloy, Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik
Project Title
Quantum and consciousness: paths to experiment, and implications for interpretations
Project Summary
Quantum theory seems to work perfectly for predicting the outcomes of laboratory experiments, but at the expense of dividing the world into an observer (experimenter) and the observed (system). In 1961, Eugene Wigner asked: what happens when one conscious observer treats another (his ‘friend’) as a system? Wigner concluded that quantum theory must break down in this situation, but he did not formulate his argument precisely, nor suggest any way his conclusion could be tested experimentally. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in doing both these things, with arguably the most powerful result being developed by two of us. However, our work raises many further questions which we aim to answer in this project. First, what sort of ‘friends’ could be incorporated into experiments of increasing complexity, to what extent they would be conscious, and exactly what would each experiment prove? Second, if these experiments are performed, what will that mean for the various proposals that have been made for making sense of the system–observer divide in quantum theory? Third, what new ideas for making sense of quantum theory are suggested by these results? Answering these will reveal much about consciousness and the physical world.
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