Between Myth and History: von Neumann on Consciousness in Quantum Mechanics

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15871v1
• Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:11:11 GMT
• Title: Between Myth and History: von Neumann on Consciousness in Quantum Mechanics
• Authors: Federico Laudisa,
• Abstract summary: The von Neumann attitude on the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented.<n>I propose substantiates a significantly more cautious attitude by von Neumann.<n>The time seems then ripe to tell a more balanced story on the relation between the notion of consciousness and the foundations of quantum mechanics.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The von Neumann attitude on such a deep interpretational question as the role of a human observer in order for the quantum description of measurement to be consistent has been long misrepresented. The large majority of the subsequent literature ascribed to von Neumann a radical view, according to which not only the collapse was in itself a truly physical process, but also the only way to accomodate it within a quantum description of a typical measurement was the introduction of human consciousness as a kind of 'causal' factor. Inspired by the work of reconstruction pursued by the phenomenological reading of the London-Bauer approach, started by Steven French more than twenty years ago, the account I propose substantiates a significantly more cautious attitude by von Neumann: the time seems then ripe to tell a more balanced story on the relation between the notion of consciousness and the foundations of quantum mechanics in the work of the first scientist - Janos von Neumann - who explicitly and rigorously addressed the implication of a really universal formulation of quantum physics.

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