On 04 Nov 2013, at 18:53, Jason Resch wrote:
It looks like Zeh had more to say in 1999, this theory seems much
closer to many dreams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-minds_interpretation
#Continuous_infinity_of_minds and http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908084
Continuous infinity of minds
[edit]
In Everett's conception the mind of an observer is split by the
measuring process as a consequence of the decoherence induced by
measurement. In many-minds each physical observer has a postulated
associated continuous infinity of minds. The decoherence of the
measuring event (observation) causes the infinity of minds
associated with each observer to become categorized into distinct
yet infinite subsets, each subset associated with each distinct
outcome of the observation. No minds are split, in the many-minds
view, because it is assumed that they are all already always distinct.
The choice between multiplication and differentiation remains free in
the many-worlds too.
The idea of many-minds was suggested early on by Zeh in 1995. He
argues that in a decohering no-collapse universe one can avoid the
necessity of distinct macrorealms ("parallel worlds" in
MWIterminology) by introducing a new psycho-physical parallelism, in
which individual minds supervene on each non-interfering component
in the physical state. Zeh indeed suggests that, given decoherence,
this is the most natural interpretation of quantum mechanics.
I agree with Zeh. I have interpreted the Everett relative states in
that way. The problem is that the notion of "world" is very fuzzy in
the physical literature (and *very large* in the analytical philosophy).
The main difference between the many-minds and many-worlds
interpretations then lies in the definition of the preferred
quantity. The many-minds interpretation suggests that to solve the
measurement problem, there is no need to secure a definite
macrorealm: the only thing that's required is appearance of such.
OK. With comp, we don't have much choice in that matter.
A bit more precisely: the idea is that the preferred quantity is
whatever physical quantity, defined on brains (or brains and parts
of their environments), has definite-valued states (eigenstates)
that underpin such appearances, i.e. underpin the states of belief
in, or sensory experience of, the familiar macroscopic realm.
It sounds like under Zeh's many-minds, the difference between it and
Everett is a world would be any/all the systems that are
psychologically indistinguishable from each other, from the view of
some mind.
For some first person plural, which is assured in Everett+Gleason (but
ad hoc in Albert-Loewer), and I can't say for Zeh, except that it
looks like Everett, but without taking he idea of definite physical
world too much seriously.
Zeh has an interesting indexical view of time, and his many-minds
seems close to the "indexical" view of physicalness we have with
computationalism. So Zeh many minds, like Everett many-worlds, and
unlike Bohm or Albert-Loewer, might be the measure one part of the
arithmetical many dream matrix or UD*. That makes sense. OK.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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