3.4.5.6 Consciousness Causes Collapse
In his treatise: The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, von Neumann deeply analyzed the measurement problem, or the effect of the observer as discussed in section 4.4.5. He concluded that the entire physical Universe could be made subject to the Schroedinger equation, which is called: the universal wave-function. He then described how measurement could cause a collapse of the wave-function. This point of view was prominently expanded in 1961 by Eugene Wigner (1902-1995), who argued that human experimenter consciousness was critical for the collapse, but he later abandoned this interpretation.
This principle, that consciousness causes the collapse, is the point of intersection between Quantum Mechanics and the mind/body problem; and some researchers are working to detect conscious events correlated with physical events that, according to quantum theory, should involve a wave-function collapse, but there are no conclusive results so far.
John Archibald Wheeler’s participatory anthropic principle says that consciousness plays some role in bringing the Universe into existence, while other physicists have elaborated their own variations of the consciousness causes collapse interpretation; including: Henry P. Stapp in his “Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer”, Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner in “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness”, and Amit Goswami in “The Self-Aware Universe”.