“Experiments indicate that the everyday world we perceive does not exist until observed,” writes scientist Bernardo Kastrup and colleagues earlier this year on Scientific American, adding that this suggests “a primary role for mind in nature.”
For Kastrup and his colleagues, these types of measurements can only be performed by a conscious observer. They write that inanimate objects like a particle detector can’t truly measure a particle. With the double-slit experiment, “the output of the detectors only becomes known when it is consciously observed by a person,” writes Kastrup. Extending this to all of reality, he argues that a “transpersonal mind” underlies the material world.
Not everyone agrees. In a Scientific American article from earlier this month, author Anil Ananthaswamy writes that double-slit experiments don’t necessarily support the existence of a transpersonal mind or the need for a conscious observer to collapse a wave function.
Ananthaswamy does accept, however, that a measurement is needed for this collapse to occur, but he adds that quantum mechanics is unclear about the nature of that measurement.
He writes that in spite of these experiments, it’s too early to ”make any claims about the nature of reality.” This is especially true given that scientists have yet to agree on the nature of consciousness, let alone whether its observational powers are needed for quantum phenomenon to occur.