Title: Does consciousness really collapse the wave function?: A possible objective biophysical resolution of the measurement problem - ScienceDirect
Headings: Does consciousness really collapse the wave function?
: A possible objective biophysical resolution of the measurement problem

Biosystems
Does consciousness really collapse the wave function?: A possible objective biophysical resolution of the measurement problem
Abstract
Keywords
1. Introduction
2. The eye as a macroscopic apparatus and its possible role in resolving the measurement problem
3. Can Euglena collapse the wave function?
4. Proposed Ghirardi superposed photon-retinal tissue experiment
5. The “many worlds” interpretation of the measurement problem: can biophysics tell us something about quantum cosmology?
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

Content: He starts with a quantum object, an observable of which is to be measured. However, based on the formalism of quantum theory and the Schrödinger dynamics in particular, as a result of the interaction between the object and the measuring instrument, the object is entangled with the instrument. von Neumann extends this chain up to an observer but, if we take an observer into consideration, we simply end up with a description according to which the body of the observer, including his or her brain, is entangled with the instrument and the object. The measurement problem can then be further refined as to how it is that a state reduction to one of the eigenstates of the measured observable can occur in this chain ( Esfeld, 1999 ). von Neumann showed that as far as final results are concerned, you can cut the chain and insert a collapse anywhere you please ( Herbert, 1985 ). He felt that the process by which a physical signal in the brain becomes an experience in the human mind or human consciousness, is the site of the wave function collapse. London and Bauer (1939) have postulated that consciousness randomly selects one product state out of the superposition of product states, thereby effecting a state reduction. Wigner (1961) feels that consciousness or the mind, plays a more directly physical role, adding an extra term to the mathematical equations and hence, selecting one particular branch of the wave function and one particular result for the experiment, thus producing the effect that von Neumann called collapse. They feel therefore, that this is a subjective rather than an objective process. Like von Neumann and, London and Bauer before him, Wigner did not give many details to back up his idea ( Whitaker, 1996, p. 201;