Christian D. Schade Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse Physics, Philosophy, and Quantum Decision Making Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse Christian D. Schade Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse Physics, Philosophy, and Quantum Decision Making 123 Christian D. Schade School of Business and Economics Humboldt University of Berlin Berlin, Germany ISBN 978-3-030-03582-2 ISBN 978-3-030-03583-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962787 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Oliver Klimek/Fotolia (Adobe Stock) This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements Let me start with my gratitude to Angela Lahee, my book editor at Springer Physics, for her competent support, including the constructive and inspiring dis- cussions we had. The book in its current form would not have been realized without her. I am also grateful to the referees and their careful reading of and commenting on my manuscript; they clearly contributed to an improvement of it. I also acknowledge the royalty-free policy of the Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics, that printed an article containing an early version of some of my thoughts: Schade, Christian D. 2015, “Collecting Evidence for the Permanent Coexistence of Parallel Realities: An Interdisciplinary Approach.” Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3: 327–362. Although many of my ideas and concepts have been refined (or simply altered) since then, some premises (and some graphs) still draw from this paper. I am especially thankful to Tanja Schade-Strohm. Tanja recently published a German language, spiritual and philosophical book on how to become the best version of yourself (“Werde zur besten Version deines Selbst: Aus der Verstimmung in die Bestimmung”, Bielefeld: TAO 2017). This book is based on a multiverse idea of our reality, and her book inspired some ideas in my book (visible via a couple of references). She also personally contributed with various discussions about important aspects of this book as well as ideas, testified via a number of acknowledgement footnotes. I am also grateful for her long-term emotional support. I finally thank Ute Ottenbreit who helped me with getting some of the literature underlying this book as well as some formatting, proofreading, etc., of the manuscript. v Contents 1 Introduction: Developing a Multiverse View of Decision Making and Consciousness ..................................... 1 Scientific Revolutions and Narcissistic Wounds of Mankind ........ 1 Healing the ‘Neurobiological Wound’ and Overarching Materialism .............................................. 3 Decision Making as the Core Paradigm ....................... 4 In a Nutshell: The Three Ingredients of Free Will ............... 5 This Book’s Contribution to the Literature ..................... 7 Overview of the Chapters ................................. 8 PART I SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE CLUSTERED-MINDS MULTIVERSE 2 Why the Multiverse Is the Most Parsimonious Way of Interpreting Quantum Mechanics ........................ 17 The ‘Issue’ with Quantum Mechanics: Defining the Measurement Problem .............................................. 17 Copenhagen Versus the Multiverse .......................... 23 Lessons from Decoherence ................................ 28 “What Is the Correct Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?” ....... 34 3 Interdisciplinary Evidence for the Multiverse, Including a Detailed Analysis of What Time Is ....................... 39 Can Research from Outside Physics Help Solve the Interpretation Problem of Quantum Mechanics? ........................... 39 A Theoretical Framework for Predictive Physiological Anticipation ........................................... 41 vii viii Contents But Are Times Really Parallel? ............................. 44 ‘Meaning’ or ‘Purpose’ of Consciousness ..................... 53 Reinterpreting Libet and Followers .......................... 54 Do the Pieces of the Puzzle Fit Together? And What Can Be Learned for the Further Development of the Multiverse Interpretation? ....... 57 4 How Different Versions of the Multiverse Interpretation Have Different Consequences for Free Will and Ontology: Developing the Concept of a Clustered-Minds Multiverse ....... 59 Requirements of an Appropriate Version of the Multiverse Interpretation .......................................... 59 Comparing Different Existing Multiverse Versions ............... 67 Multiplicity of Physical Realities: The Realist Version of the Multiverse ..................................... 67 Multiplicity in the Mental Realm: An Infinite-Minds Version of the Multiverse .......................................... 69 A Many-Minds Version of the Multiverse: The View by H. Dieter Zeh ..................................... 71 Infinite Minds, but Consciousness is Not Passive: The EEC Version of the Multiverse ............................... 72 Free, but Alone—Or not Alone, but Unfree: Singular Perceived Reality and Universal Consciousness Interpretations by Euan Squires...................................... 74 Introducing the Clustered-Minds Multiverse .................... 77 PART II ANSWERS SUGGESTED BY THE CLUSTERED-MINDS MULTIVERSE FOR SELECTED QUESTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 5 Dualistic Idealism: No Supervenience of Consciousness on the Physical ........................................ 87 Mind and Body—Different Realms? ......................... 87 Bottom-up or Top-Down Creation of Reality in the Multiverse? ..... 90 Physicalism, Supervenience, and the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness ....................................... 91 Supervenience, Decoherence, and the Multiverse ................ 93 Introducing the Concept of Dualistic Idealism .................. 95 Contents ix 6 A Special Form of Free Will: Parallel Watching of Different ‘Movies,’ but with Different Levels of Awareness .............. 97 Opening the Debate ..................................... 97 Some Stereotypical Positions in the Free-Will Debate: Short Descriptions and Critical Evaluations .................... 99 The Extreme Positions Disappear: Free Will from the Perspective of the Clustered-Minds Multiverse ........................... 102 Choice or Perception? A Detailed Look into the Type of Freedom Granted Within the Clustered-Minds Multiverse ................. 105 7 Are We Responsible for Our Decisions? ..................... 111 Continuing the Debate ................................... 111 Who Is Morally Responsible Under Which Conditions? And Do Those Conditions in Principle Hold Within the Clustered-Minds Multiverse? ............................ 112 The Power of the Unconscious: A Caveat to Responsibility? ....... 117 Staying Away from ‘Very-Low-Consciousness’ Situations: Cluster Membership as a Limitation or a Basis for Responsibility? ...................................... 119 General Conclusions ..................................... 122 PART III QUANTUM DECISION MAKING IN THE MULTIVERSE AS VECTORIAL CHOICE: TOWARDS A TRANSFORMATION OF THE DECISION SCIENCES 8 General Framework, Objective Function, and Probability ....... 127 Normative Decision Theory ............................... 127 Frameworks of Behavioral Decision Theory and Quantum Decision Making in the Form Proposed by Other Authors ......... 131 Causation Versus Effectuation .............................. 134 Changing the Objective Function: Allocation of Consciousness to Different Alternatives Instead of Choosing the Utility Maximizing Alternative .................................. 138 Strengths of the Effectuation Framework for Usage and Further Development Within the Clustered-Minds Multiverse .... 144 Summary, Final Discussion, and Conclusions ................... 148 x Contents 9 Different Concepts of Utility .............................. 153 Existing Utility Concepts Are (Very) Different: Which One (If Any) Works in the Clustered-Minds Multiverse? .............. 153 “Back to Bentham?” Are There Advantages of Experienced Utility over Decision Utility from the Perspective of the Multiverse? ....... 155 What Is Different with Experienced Utility? .................. 155 Experienced Utility or Decision Utility in the Clustered-Minds Multiverse—What Is