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In the 1960s, Eugene Wigner reformulated the "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment as "Wigner's friend" and proposed that the consciousness of an observer is the demarcation line that precipitates collapse of the wave function, independent of any realist interpretation.
Apr 29, 2020 · Physicist Eugene Wigner coined the phrase in the 1960s to encapsulate the curious fact that merely by manipulating numbers we can describe and predict all manner of natural phenomena with...
Turning to philosophical questions about the theory of quantum mechanics, Wigner developed a thought experiment (later called Wigner's Friend paradox) to illustrate his belief that consciousness is foundational to the quantum mechanical measurement process. He thereby followed an ontological approach that sets human's consciousness at the ...
Aug 17, 2020 · Wigner held the then popular view that consciousness somehow triggers a superposition to collapse. Thus, his hypothetical friend would discern a definite outcome when she or he made a...
- Zeeya Merali
Eugene Wigner made quantum physics even more subjective than had John von Neumann or even Erwin Schrödinger with his famous Cat Paradox. Wigner claimed that a quantum measurement requires the mind of a conscious observer, without which wave functions never collapse and nothing ever happens in the universe. He wrote:
Feb 12, 2024 · Specifically, he came to believe that the idea that “consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function” leads to solipsism. In his own words, Wigner argued that “ [s]olipsism may be ...
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According to physicist Leslie Ballentine, by 1987 Wigner had decided that consciousness does not cause a physical collapse of the wavefunction, although he still believed that his chain of inferences leading up to that conclusion were correct.
