Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse: Physics, Philosophy, and Quantum Decision Making

Cham: Springer Verlag (2018)
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Abstract

It is hard to interpret quantum mechanics. The most surprising, but also most parsimonious, interpretation is the many-worlds, or quantum-multiverse interpretation, implying a permanent coexistence of parallel realities. Could this perhaps be the appropriate interpretation of quantum mechanics? This book collects evidence for this interpretation, both from physics and from other fields, and proposes a subjectivist version of it, the clustered-minds multiverse. The author explores its implications through the lens of decision making and derives consequences for free will and consciousness. For example, free will can be implemented in the form of vectorial choices, as introduced in the book. He furthermore derives consequences for research in the social sciences, especially in psychology and economics.

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Chapters

Selected Consequences of the Clustered-Minds Multiverse for Weltanschauung and Scientific Research

The last part of the book contains only one final chapter that is concerned with consequences of the clustered-minds multiverse for our weltanschauung and for future research in physics and in the social sciences. This chapter does not aim at the impossible: summarizing from all the previous chapter... see more

A Generalized Rosenthal Effect in Experimental Research in the Social Sciences

If consciousness is able to allocate more or less weight to certain measurement outcomes in a quantum experiment, why shouldn’t it be able to allocate, say, more or less weight to certain ‘non-quantum’ measurement outcomes, e.g., within experiments carried out in the social sciences? The Rosenthal e... see more

Repetition Compulsion and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Chapters 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_11 and 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_12 discuss potentially far-reaching consequences of the clustered-minds multiverse for psychological phenomena as well as experimentation in the social sciences . Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_11 starts with the phenomenon of re... see more

Different Concepts of Utility

Chapter 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_9 concerns itself with another aspect of the objective function: What makes individuals prefer one vector of ‘reality weights’ over another? How should the utility that is generated from a set of ‘movies,’ a set of realities that an individual has chosen, be defined... see more

General Framework, Objective Function, and Probability

A step towards theory development in the decision sciences will be taken in chapters 8-10 . These closely intertwined chapters discuss challenges that the multiverse perspective might pose for that discipline. In a singular universe, a rational decision maker is supposed to choose the alternative wi... see more

Games and Markets

The last of the three chapters on consequences for the decision sciences looks at strategic and economic decisions, a vast part of the chapter being dedicated to a certain simultaneous market entry game. That game turns out to be interesting from the perspective of the multiverse because it is chara... see more

Are We Responsible for Our Decisions?

Closely connected with chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_6, chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_7 concentrates on the philosophical discussion around responsibility. However, whereas the possibility of executing free will can unambiguously be shown in the clustered-minds multiverse, responsibility will tu... see more

A Special Form of Free Will: Parallel Watching of Different ‘Movies,’ but with Different Levels of Awareness

A plethora of possibilities of making experiences exist, and consciousness decides on how much emphasis to put on which realities . Chapter 6 therefore argues that consciousness is indeed executing free will, albeit in a special form. Traditionally, there has been considerable ‘dispute’ over the que... see more

Dualistic Idealism: No Supervenience of Consciousness on the Physical

The novel multiverse interpretation proposed in chapter 4, the clustered-minds multiverse, has consequences for various discussions in philosophy. Some consequences will be explored in chaps. 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_5, 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_6 and 10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_7 . One of the old as... see more

How Different Versions of the Multiverse Interpretation Have Different Consequences for Free Will and Ontology: Developing the Concept of a Clustered-Minds Multiverse

Chapter 4, directly building up on the theoretical analysis in chapters 2 and 3, specifies the interpretation of the multiverse proposed in this book. Indeed, many scholars have pointed out that Everett’s original ‘many-worlds’ interpretation needs interpretation. Existing versions exhibit different... see more

Interdisciplinary Evidence for the Multiverse, Including a Detailed Analysis of What Time Is

Building up on Chapter 2’s mainly physical analysis, this chapter chooses an interdisciplinary perspective and aims at re-interpreting the famous Libet results showing that physiological processes are preceding conscious decisions – normally taken to imply an impossibility of free will. Closely rela... see more

Why the Multiverse Is the Most Parsimonious Way of Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

This chapter is the first of three crafting the theory of the multiverse interpretation suggested in this book: the clustered-minds multiverse, and constituting Part I of the book. Chapter 2 deals with the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and the resulting interpretation problem; it also con... see more

Introduction: Developing a Multiverse View of Decision Making and Consciousness

The first chapter provides an introduction to the concept of the quantum multiverse, also showing the reader what to expect when reading the book. What are the challenges when confronted with this unusual perspective on life? Is the multiverse, applying Sigmund Freud’s famous reflections on the move... see more

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