Abstract
According to physicalism, only entities postulated by the our best theories of physics are allowed at the fundamental level. Quantum mechanics is claimed to be one of such best theories, but it remains controversial which are supposed to be the entities postulated by the theory. Particularly puzzling is the fact that quantum mechanics is committed to the claim that any two possible quantum states of a system can be added together to form another legitimate quantum state, a superposition thereof. The collapse postulate---which states that, when we observe a superposed state, it collapses unto one option or the other---is intended to solve the issue. The problem is that the formalism does not specify what counts as an observation. Although it might be natural to link the collapse of the wave function with consciousness, such assertion appears to be in tension with the physicalist spirit because it seems to bring consciousness to the fundamental level. In this paper we present an objective collapse model (a variation of CSL) where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in which "consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function," our model is fully consistent with a physicalist view of the world and does not require the postulation of entities suspicious of laying outside of the quantum realm.
Elias Okon