The Completeness of Quantum Mechanics and the Determinateness and Consistency of Intersubjective Experience

Abstract

AbstractRecent experiments (gedanken or otherwise) and theorems in quantum mechanics (QM) have led many people to claim that QM is not compatible with determinate and intersubjectively consistent experience, what some call the “absoluteness” of observed events; examples include new iterations on Wigner’s friend and delayed choice. Herein we provide a realist psi-epistemic take on QM that saves the absoluteness of observed events and the completeness of QM, without giving up free will or locality. We also show how our realist psi-epistemic account eliminates the measurement problem and, coupled with our take on neutral monism, also eliminates the hard problem of consciousness. On our view there is no need for conscious experience to explain measurement collapse nor any need for measurement collapse to resolve the hard problem. The key here is to reject the unquestioned assumptions that inexorably lead to the measurement problem and the hard problem. This will require a reconception of QM and, a reconception of matter, conscious experience and their relationship to one another.