Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Rediscovering the Mind 45The plight of Schrödinger’s cat carries this idea further – thateven a cat could be in a quantum-mechanical superposition ofstates until a human observer intervened. One might object, andsay, “Wait a minute! Isn’t a live cat as much of a consciousobserver as a human being is?” Probably it is – but notice thatthis cat is possibly a dead cat, whichis certainly not a conscious observer. In effect, we havecreated, in Schrödinger’s cat, a superposition of twoeigenstates one of which has observer status, the other of whichlacks it! Now what shall we do? The situation is reminiscent ofa Zen riddle (recounted in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Repx)posed by the master Kyögen:Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice. Hishands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb, and under the treeanother person asks him: “Why did Bodhidharma come to China fromIndia?” if the man in the tree does not answer, he fails; and if hedoes answer, he falls and loses his life. Now what shall he do?To many physicists the distinction between systems with observerstatus and those without has seemed artificial, even repugnant.Moreover, the idea that an observer’s intervention causes a“collapse of the wave function” -- a sudden jump into onerandomly chosen pure eigenstate – introduces caprice into theultimate laws of nature. “God does not play dice” (“Der Herrgottwurfelt nicht” was Einstein’s lifelong belief.A radical attempt to save both continuity and determinism inquantum mechanics is known as the “many-worlds interpretation”of quantum mechanics, first proposed in 1957 by Hugh EverettIII. According