The mishap<\/strong>
\nArmel and I had stopped on the western side of rue de Cond\u00e9 in Paris. Francis who was aware that we were on our way to take the metro at Od\u00e9on has also stopped. However, Isabelle who was unaware of our plans had already crossed the street. She suddenly realizes that she\u2019s the only one to have done so and comes back briskly on her tracks. But a car driven at full speed irrupts that will not manage to avoid hitting her\u2026<\/p>\nA few seconds later I hear myself say to her: \u201cI did see your blood covering the road.\u201d Armel says: \u201cThe car passed only inches from you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wake up right in the middle of the night and I think: \u201cI truly saw her lying dead: I did see Isabelle\u2019s blood on the road. Soon afterwards I saw her alive but for a fraction of a second I did not imagine her being dead: I literally saw her dead.\u201d I say to myself: the world bifurcated, I was at one point part of a world where Isabelle died and soon afterwards part of a world where \u2013 thank God! \u2013 she was alive. Didn\u2019t that fleeting vision of the accident imply a brief coexistence of two incompatible state-of-things? A co-existence which \u2013 as it is assumed by quantum mechanics \u2013 gets resolved by the sudden synthesis of two equally possible state-of-affairs until then superimposed (the famous \u201ccollapse of the wave-function\u201d). <\/p>\n
I start thinking of what report survivors of a \u201cnear-death experience\u201d who claim having experienced that their consciousness (soul) is \u201chovering\u201d above the scene where their body struggles between life and death. They mention that such contemplation was brutally interrupted and that they regained consciousness, that is, that their consciousness was all of a sudden reunited with their bruised body in a process reminiscent of the collapse of the wave-function at the quantum level.<\/p>\n
I go back to sleep. A little later, still in the middle of the night, I wake up once again and within a couple of minutes a series of philosophical consequences of the \u201cmany worlds\u201d hypothesis precipitate in my reflection: a deductive stream comprising the reconciliation of the standpoints of realism and of idealism; a confirmation of the Leibnizian concept of the \u201cbest of all possible worlds\u201d; an expansion of the Cartesian cogito; the role played by Reason in History; [1]; finally, how to conceive (in a non-contradictory way) the essence of Being.
\n
\nDoes consistency entail truth?<\/strong>
\nIt goes without saying that when I woke up in the morning, I\u2019d stopped believing in any of those tall stories and I assigned their conception to the relaxation of the critical faculties characterizing nocturnal ponderings. Still\u2026 during the day I went back several times to these reflections, still astonished at the aesthetic beauty of an approach which answers some classical philosophical questions, all starting from the \u201cmany worlds\u201d hypothesis. It is this sentiment of the beauty of the deductive waterfall which encourages me to write it down, in spite of what I regard as its quasi null plausibility [2].<\/p>\nWhat struck me during my nocturnal reflection was not only the ease with which those questions coming to my mind were solved but even more so how these \u2013 seeming to me until then disparate \u2013 were organizing themselves harmoniously as a whole, precisely because a solution was given to them in a deductive order. We got used to the idea that science is the domain of questions which would end up being solved while philosophy, in reverse, that of those which would remain open. But \u2013 rightly or wrongly \u2013 science has disappointed us in that regard. Does the reversal of perspectives apply also to philosophy, meaning by that that its own questions can also get solved? <\/p>\n
But how could we trust a world representation the sole merit of which is to help solve an important set of questions having occupied over the ages the attention of philosophers? In other words, what guarantee does a theory provide as to its truth if its single virtue is its consistency, its very capacity at being systematic? Would such a disposition to answer these questions without self-contradiction offer it \u2013 inductively speaking \u2013 a truthfulness which otherwise \u2013 with regard to its contents \u2013 would be flatly denied to it?<\/p>\n
Snow\u2019s \u201ctwo cultures\u201d<\/strong>
\nAn intellectual debate has recently taken place the object of which was the contention that philosophers most often misunderstand the meaning of views held by scientists. The alleged reason was that the epistemological scope of the scientific theories and of the facts from which philosophers build an argument is in truth beyond their reach, in such way that, contrary to what they assume, philosophers do not build upon the scientific experience but find there nothing more than a \u201csource of inspiration\u201d (cf. Sokal & Bricmont 1997; Bouveresse 1999). I\u2019m offered here an opportunity to respond indirectly to that accusation when demonstrating what occurs when a philosopher takes in earnest what scientists hold as true, in this instance with the implications of the so-called \u201cmany worlds\u201d theory which assumes that the universe keeps splitting into a multitude of parallel worlds [3]. The outcome of my reflection, presented in two stages is, as will be seen, surprising at every step of its development.<\/p>\nEverett\u2019s \u201cmany worlds\u201d interpretation<\/strong>
\nLay persons are sometimes introduced to the unexpected behavior at the microscopic level of elementary particles studied by quantum mechanics through the thought experiment of \u201cSchr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cat\u201d leading to the \u201cmany worlds\u201d hypothesis. The premise is that of competing states of reality remaining superposed until some event such as their observation \u2013 or rather the interaction with them which their measurement supposes \u2013 forces them to choose a manner to be, and this, paradoxically, without any of the alternatives implicit within the initial superposition losing their reality, i.e. occurring also in their own right [4]. The interaction \u2013 of which measurement is but one of the possible forms \u2013 is then the motive for the bifurcation of worlds between two of their potential modes. <\/p>\nIn the thought experiment devised by Schr\u00f6dinger in the 1930s, a cat whose survival hangs on the breaking or not of a vial containing cyanide finds himself simultaneously dead and alive in two equi-possible but bifurcating worlds: two worlds having diverged from each other. Whether the vial breaks or not is determined by a quantum fluctuation with a fifty percent chance of occurrence. In the classical \u201cCopenhagen\u201d interpretation of quantum mechanics the wave-function collapses and the world \u201cchooses\u201d between the two equally possible outcomes. In the \u201cmany worlds\u201d interpretation, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive in two words in the process of splitting (\u201cdecohering\u201d) [5], the ontology underlying this conception being thus that of a myriad of co-existing worlds, each of them evolving following a script proper to it, hence the \u201cmany worlds\u201d appellation for this particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. <\/p>\n
Life and death in \u201cmany worlds\u201d<\/strong>
\nWhat \u2013 to my knowledge \u2013 has never been debated in the discussions around Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cat is the way he sees it himself, possibly because the author of the thought experiment assumed that the animal is not fully aware of what is happening to him. Let\u2019s replace therefore the cat by a human being so to make the experiment more telling. If the latter is both dead and alive one is free to assume that the common principles applying to consciousness remain valid in both cases, meaning by that that 1o in that world where he is dead, his corpse is devoid of consciousness while 2\u00ba in that world where he is still alive, his body remains conscious, i.e. experiences to be alive (unless he is asleep or in a coma). In other words, in a case where two scripts diverge where in one the person dies and in the other that person remains alive, self-awareness remains automatically attached to that script where the body\u2019s metabolic functions remain unimpaired [6].<\/p>\nAccording to some prominent contemporary physicists, the existence of such bifurcations between possible worlds has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. I intend now to draw from this some consequences. The first is the following : should there exist competing strategies where the unsuccessful alternative implies the death of the subject choosing it, he will fail to notice it as his self-awareness remains necessarily attached to that (or those) many worlds where he stays alive \u2013 however low the probability of the script to which this (or these) correspond. He will therefore fail to notice that his choice of a strategy was infelicitous. Within the autobiographic narrations which he will be happy to share in the world where he survives, he will go so far as justifying to whomever is prepared to lend him a listening ear the alleged wisdom of his poor judgment, involuntarily reinforcing that way his inclination towards calamitous tactical moves. Such a strategy will last until he encounters circumstances when his probability of survival has become objectively nil. We\u2019re all familiar with characters utterly proud of their prowess to whom we assign no talent whatsoever for what positive becomes to them but only the inordinate quality of their luck.<\/p>\n
This phenomenon would account for an observation made by psychologists about the irrational behavior of compulsive gamblers (Tversky & Wakker 1995) displaying an attitude which other animals aren\u2019t burdened with: entrenchment in error. The type of self-reflection characterized by unwarranted self-congratulation (\u201cmy choice was so judicious\u2026\u201d) about decisions bound to materialize in ineluctable death in a parallel world, is necessary for such entrenchment in error to develop evolutionarily. Indeed, the animal being deprived of consciousness is faced with the objectivity of the success or failure of its behavior while man, whose consciousness remains out of necessity linked to that world where his body stays alive, is encouraged to persevere in his self-defeating tactics, however inept he has shown himself in the task of ensuring his own survival.<\/p>\n
Since I\u2019ve just mentioned gambling I feel entitled to propose the following theorem in a \u201cmany worlds\u201d perspective: Russian roulette is a riskless pursuit with a significant potential for profit <\/em>(this applies also to any type of extreme<\/em> sports). This is truly a simple corollary of what I just suggested: the player saves his skin \u2013 at least within his own story: that whereto his self-awareness is attached \u2013 as long as there is within the range of possible scripts at least one where he manages to stay alive. As in Russian roulette the chance of surviving is set \u2013 per definition \u2013 at five out of six, the player escapes unscathed every time. Of course, as far as others around him are concerned he dies necessarily one time out of six, but as far as he\u2019s concerned, the risk of dying due to playing the game is nil. Surely he\u2019s bound to die one day for some other reason: whenever his probability of survival within the whole set of possible scripts open to him has lowered to zero. This means that in most cases he\u2019ll end up dying \u201csubjectively\u201d from a natural death due to the ultimate corruption of his material body. The long-lasting existence of the game over the centuries, in spite of its seeming danger derives from the theorem\u2019s truth.<\/p>\nI just mentioned that in the surroundings of a Russian roulette player, his partners die one time out of six while as far as he is concerned that probability is nil. More generally, all actors succumbing to a violent death in the story I personally experience do lead in fact a much more peaceful life within their own story (by which I mean the subjective experience they have of it). Conversely, the adventurous life that I\u2019m leading appears much more dangerous to my contemporaries than to myself, my own capacity at escaping unscathed from the most compromised circumstances being, as we\u2019ve seen, considerable. This last observation may be generalized in a second theorem: Each of us leads (subjectively) a much more peaceful life than what his contemporaries observe<\/em>. <\/p>\nProvidence<\/strong>
\nThe story of one\u2019s own consciousness follows thus necessarily an \u201coptimistic\u201d slant meaning that, on the whole, one will get away with things, if not forever, at least a significant number of times [7]. The classical notion of providence refers to this principle that we all observe busily at work within our own lives. This explains in particular why a large proportion of desperate situations still find a happy ending deemed \u201cprovidential\u201d and this despite the objectively low probability of such unexpected \u201creversals of fortune.\u201d For instance, despite the objective ineluctability of a thermo-nuclear world war \u2013 due to a basic cultural misunderstanding between the over-armed protagonists, both inclined to paranoid reasoning \u2013 we, likely readers of my text, have all survived World War III. A set of questions which go without saying for any individual within Western culture, like \u201cWhy me here and now\u2026 what is the meaning of the world surrounding me relative to my own existence?\u201d etc. find then each a nearly self-evident response while, together, they lock in into an aesthetically satisfactory whole.<\/p>\nThe meaning of life<\/strong>
\nMy own consciousness arises out of necessity within the single world where my existence is possible. Because it is, among the multitude of worlds in existence, the only one where my own existence is able to manifest itself, within this singular world my existence is not contingent but necessary: this singular world and my own existence in its midst are consubstantial. As it is necessary to it, my presence within the world I inhabit is ontologically speaking unproblematic. The obviousness of this thesis would show plainly if it were given to me to observe simultaneously my presence here and now within the sole world that I live in and my total absence from the myriads of alternative parallel worlds where my existence is impossible. That type of experience is of course beyond our reach as the observation by me of another singular world than that I live in would imply my necessary presence in it, which is contradictory. <\/p>\nMy own necessity within a singular world is accompanied by that of all events preceding my coming into its history. These do not take their meaning from the sole fact of my own existence: they are meaningful just as well because of the existence of six billons of my contemporaries [8]. This being said, it would be irrelevant for me to wonder about seeming oddities \u2013 due to their unlikelihood \u2013 in their sequence: it is their particular configuration which made me possible; any alternative resulted in ontologically distinct worlds: even if the events which presided to the existence of those worlds were much more \u201cplausible\u201d my existence there would remain impossible.<\/p>\n
The best of all possible worlds<\/strong>
\n The ontological price to pay for the parallel existence of myriads of contingent worlds is the necessity per se of each of them, meaning the intrinsic necessity of every event taking place in it within its own sequence \u2013 in other words what is deemed as \u201cdeterminism.\u201d Let\u2019s illustrate this with an unlikely series of events: my mother survives World War II due to the following circumstances. Her own mother, a non-Jew \u2013 dies in 1941 in occupied Belgium from a rapidly evolving cancer. My grandfather \u2013 Jewish \u2013 finds himself with the status of family head having under his responsibility non-Jewish children and for that reason closely escapes deportation.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve often thought of Nazism\u2019s uncanny rationality which \u2013 taking literally the Jewish genealogical logic \u2013 authorized my grandfather\u2019s survival while his brothers and sisters vanished in death camps. Within a \u201cmany worlds\u201d approach my wondering is however uncalled for: my own existence supposes automatically that within my own world Nazis adopted a matrilinear logic to rule the way they processed Jews. This doesn\u2019t mean that my existence explains or justifies their approach; it simply means that the only possible world where my existence manifests itself is one where Nazis applied to the extermination of Jews a matrilinear logic: in that or in all those where \u2013 in a perspective a lowered rationality \u2013 they adopted a patrilinear logic, I simply failed to be born. Other example, for 200,000 years Neanderthals were contemporaries of Homo Sapiens. Why did they then vanish? The question in truth is idle through logical necessity. Indeed, in a parallel world, a conscious subject notices being a Neanderthal and asks himself a question symmetrical to mine: what did possibly happen with Homo Sapiens?<\/p>\n
There is no need therefore for me to worry about the conditions for my own existence: they are a necessary given of my idiosyncratic world. And this, not because my own existence would give that world its meaning but because within this idiosyncratic world there exists a double necessity: of its evolution as it took place and of my presence within it at a particular period in time. In other words, my existence imposes a retrospective constraint on the world where I show up: my existence is contingent within the context of all possible worlds but it is indispensable within the singular world whereof I\u2019m talking and wherefrom I\u2019m talking.<\/p>\n
From my own standpoint this implies I necessarily live in that of the many worlds where I automatically find my bearings as not only are all events that took place there before I was born compatible with it but also because as long as I stay alive all contemporary events are similarly compossible with me. For all of us \u2013 the complete \u201ccohort\u201d of contemporaries \u2013 our existence imposes a set of identical constraints on the past existence of the world; the same applies of course always and everywhere for every cohort. This establishes between the members of any cohort a Leibnizian \u201ccompossibility\u201d: whatever the apparent variety of my contemporaries, we are linked together by the fact that our simultaneous emergence to existence is \u201ccompossible,\u201d compatible with the antecedent history of a singular world. The same works symmetrically with the future. <\/p>\n
The world we offer our descendants is the same as our own until the time when they are conceived. Later, each of these worlds begins to split. Consequently it is not entirely vacuous wishing generously to entrust one\u2019s own children a better world: theirs is out of necessity identical to ours over some part of its history as being submitted to the same set of constraints which its prior history entails: my own children\u2019s world can only start bifurcating once I\u2019ve lived in it for a certain time [9].<\/p>\n
The end of my compossibility with my world amounts to my death. In old age my metabolism exhausts itself in attempting to maintain the compossibility of my cells and of my organs with the world I belong. As long as there remains one such world where my existence is possible, my consciousness remains attached to it. This allows me to constantly stick to what is for me the best of all possible worlds<\/em>, that where \u2013 often against all plausibility \u2013 I\u2019m staying alive. What has been rediscovered here is naturally a well-known Leibnizian thesis; it has been rediscovered though ironically. Each of us lives in the best possible world with the crucial qualification that there is no single world bearing that property. For each of us our world is only the best possible world because, on the one hand, such worlds exist in the background in astronomical collections (due to their incessant disposition to diverge from each other and follow distinct tracks) and, on the other hand, because our consciousness \u2013 being attached to our material body \u2013 holds automatically the providential ability to stick to that that punishes us in the most benign manner for our mistakes. Besides, this harmony does not result as with Leibniz from a divine will external to our world but from the ontological haziness characterizing nature at the quantum level\u2019 [Hegel claims that with Leibniz this divine will is \u201cas it were, the waste channel into which all contradictions flow\u201d ([1840] 1995: 348).<\/p>\nCogito ergo sum<\/strong>
\nFrom this follows a conception providing a reconciliation of idealism and realism<\/em>. The world exists indeed but the one I\u2019m given to observe is necessarily \u201cmy world\u201d: it is its constraints which justify my emergence into existence. It is no doubt not my own existence which provides to this world its full meaning but it does contribute to tits meaning: this world is fully mine and I share it with the cohort of my contemporaries even if their paths within that world diverge continuously from mine. Hence a possible extension of the Cartesian cogito<\/em>: \u201cI think therefore I am: I am therefore my world is in a certain way.\u201d The fact of my consciousness allows me to apprehend the world where I exist while that existence of mine is consubstantial with a singular world; this means that there exists on that world a constraint which is that of my compossibility with all else composing that world. The very fact that I think does not shape that world, nor does it determine it post hoc but I and the world where my consciousness dwells are inseparably tied within the fabric of a unique script among the myriads of others which are not only possible but do actually materialize themselves independently. <\/p>\nReason in History<\/strong>
\nIn the same way, my existence and the consciousness I hold of it, appearing after a considerable number of generations have succeeded each other, entail that over that very long period collaborative behavior between human beings has reproduced itself consistently. The further I show up in human history, the more my own existence entails \u2013 as a constraint \u2013 the ability of the human species to survive over a longer period; the probability of such an uninterrupted sequence depends on the reduction of the self-destructive tendencies that my species has displayed over history and on the emergence, conversely, of increasingly collaborative traits. In other words, the further I intervene in my world\u2019s history, the more my existence entails progress in my species\u2019 reconciliation<\/em> with itself. What is observed here is not the manifestation of an evolutionary<\/em> principle at work but the implications of a rational<\/em> constraint. This means that the further I appear within my world\u2019s history, the more my existence entails the manifestation of reason in the history <\/em>of that world. But also, and whichever the time when a consciousness becomes aware of itself, that consciousness will necessarily observe in the period that preceded its advent the manifestation of reason in history. More specifically, my existence does not prevent Nazi barbarity in the years which immediately precede my own birth but it supposes the limited rationality which makes them adopt the Judaic notion of genealogy when they undertake to exterminate Jews. Each of us belongs fully to the time where he or she was born. It is no accident that I get born in 1946, it is indeed in that year that the space of my possibility opens up: neither before, nor after but at that very moment within a singular world.<\/p>\nWe all receive therefore our own time as an inalienable gift: that time is not only the time where each of us has become possible but also that time where his or her absence would leave its mark as a genuine void. I carry in my own essence the imprint of the barbarity that preceded shortly my birth, as well as of that surrounding me since. In other words, it is not foreign to me: I partake to the world where it resides. There is consubstantiality, automatic harmony between my time and myself; I am the fruit of it while my time bears carved in it my imprint: in no way could I not have belonged to my time.<\/p>\n
The anthropic cosmological principle<\/strong>
\nSome years back, John Barrow and Frank Tipler (1986) proposed their \u201canthropic cosmological principle.\u201d Starting from the observation that a world likely to generate creatures similar to ourselves is out of necessity very specifically constrained within a narrow range of possible values for universal physical constants, Barrow and Tipler regard such a configuration as highly unlikely and our universe therefore resulting from a design. The startling nature of such a coincidence fades away however if it is established that besides that world exist also myriads of parallel worlds where these constants hold different values. The supposedly \u201csignificant\u201d observation of the very low probability of an \u201canthropic\u201d universe turns out to be trivial in the \u201cmany worlds\u201d perspective. Under its trivialized form, the \u201canthropic cosmological principle\u201d can be reformulated in the following way: We necessarily appear in a world where our existence is possible and are necessarily absent from worlds where it is impossible<\/em>. <\/p>\nConsequently, it is most unlikely that exist other inhabited stellar systems in any world where I\u2019m myself present: the chain of events necessary to lead to the rise of consciousness under the guise which I observe in myself and in my fellow humans is much too singular to imagine that anywhere else in that same world it has arisen under an analogous shape. In that respect, Barrow and Tipler are no doubt right: the meaning of our world resides in some way in ourselves and, within every possible world where consciousness has arisen it is the form under which it manifests itself that provides it with a meaning, in the way that, as Schelling conceived it, Man, or under its generalized form, Reason, is the means by which Nature becomes aware of itself (Schelling as quoted by Hegel [1840] 1995: 517).<\/p>\n
[10]<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong>
\nTime has come now to undo the scaffolding which constituted in my paper the many worlds hypothesis and examine what would ensue. What I mean to elicit is whether the answers I offered to some classical philosophical questions would still stand if physicists subscribing to the \u201cmany worlds\u201d view were wrong and if the spontaneous interpretation we hold of the world, i.e. that there is in truth only one, were actually correct. If so, what would then appear is that the kind of questions philosophy asks does constitute a system and this prior to the fact that one can \u2013 as I did here \u2013 link them in a deductive mode. In other words, when asking over the ages the same questions I asked here, philosophy was in fact entailing a very specific ontology, half-realist, half-idealist, comprehending both a modeled representation of that world and what comes closest to what a human being may consider as its meaning per se and relative to him or her, i.e. a full-fledged and comprehensive notion of Being. <\/p>\nWhat is more, the reason why the simple fact of asking such questions equates with love of wisdom has become obvious. Our necessary presence within a world entirely made of compossible existences offers the terms of a reconciliation: how to work at maximizing compossibility through extending the compatibility and complementarity of consciences. This world accompanied by the horror specific to the time we are born (I\u2019m speaking here to the members of my cohort) is undoubtedly ours in a non\u2013contingent manner. If we don\u2019t like it we should feel free to change it to our whims. When doing so we need to remain aware that we are only modifying a singular world among myriads of parallel worlds. Still it remains that we are free to modify one [11]. And to do so we possess as an invaluable asset that \u2013 like cats \u2013 we are given the chance to be deadly wrong about how to proceed, eight times. <\/p>\n
1 Removed 2007: \u201cwhat one should think of the notion that time has only a purely psychological reality\u201d.<\/p>\n
2 I\u2019ve changed my mind on this (2007).<\/p>\n
3 The \u201cmany worlds\u201d theory is a reformulation of quantum mechanics published in 1957 by Hugh Everett III in the thesis he defended at Princeton. Other famed physicists such as Gell-Mann and Hartle, subscribe to close varieties of that interpretation. Price remarks that \u201c[Many-worlds is a return to the classical, pre-quantum view of the universe in which all the mathematical entities of a physical theory are real\u201d (Price 1994-95). <\/p>\n
4 Price: \u201cAccording to many-worlds all the possible outcomes of a quantum interaction are realized. The wave-function, instead of collapsing at the moment of observation, carries on evolving in a deterministic fashion, embracing all possibilities embedded within it. All outcomes exist simultaneously but do not interfere further with each other, each world having split into mutually unobservable but equally real worlds\u201d (Price 1994-95).<\/p>\n
5 Price: \u201cFrom the surviving cat’s point of view it occupies a different world from its unlucky and late copy\u201d (Price 1994-95).<\/p>\n
6 Death in one of the scripts leads to a quick divergence between the two worlds: \u201cThe worlds split or \u2018decohere\u2019 from each other when irreversible events occur. [\u2026 Those] irreversible processes, in particular, will destroy almost any possibility of interference effects being restored in the future [between the worlds having diverged]\u201d (Price 1994-95). In reverse, in the absence of such irreversibility, the full set of worlds where I stay alive quickly restore their unity. Evoking the fact that we don\u2019t experience (within the world where we remain alive) the effect of such bifurcations, Price observes: \u201cArguments that the world picture presented by this theory is contradicted by experience, because we are unaware of any branching process, are like the criticism of the Copernican theory that the mobility of the earth as a real physical fact is incompatible with the common sense interpretation of nature because we feel no such motion. In both case the arguments fails when it is shown that the theory itself predicts that our experience will be what it in fact is. (In the Copernican case the addition of Newtonian physics was required to be able to show that the earth’s inhabitants would be unaware of any motion of the earth.)\u201d (Price 1994-95).<\/p>\n
7 A number of times that intuition \u2013 founded on empirical evidence \u2013 has evaluated as nine, before this disposition to relative immortality got assigned to cats, hence the title of my essay.<\/p>\n
8 Excluding here all other living creatures and all inert entities \u2013 which are being ignored due to the very special quality of self\u2013reflection authorized by consciousness. Animals \u2013 or some of them \u2013 might also experience consciousness but, by contrast with my fellow humans, they fail (in any case with most of us) at convincing us that they do (Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s cat in particular).<\/p>\n
9 Price : \u201c[the notion of] many-histories defines a multiply-connected hierarchy of classical histories where each classical history is a “child” of any parent history which has only a subset of the child defining irreversible events and a parent of any history which has a superset of such events\u201d (Price 1994-95).<\/p>\n
10 One paragraph removed.<\/p>\n
11 Unless the feeling of freedom accompanying consciousness is purely illusory. I need to mention this as I defended that thesis elsewhere (Jorion 1999). If, as I claimed in that earlier essay consciousness is deprived of any decisional power we are then reduced to being powerless witnesses of our own history, able at most to generate about it an autobiographical narrative ratifying the facts post hoc. Consciousness as a dead-end-street is a possible interpretation for the Platonic myth of the cave (see also Griswold 1999: 14). <\/p>\n
References:
\nBarrow, John D. & Tipler, Frank J., The Anthropic Cosmological Principle<\/em>, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986<\/p>\nBouveresse, Jacques, Prodiges et vertiges de l\u2019analogie, De l\u2019abus des belles-lettres dans la pens\u00e9e<\/em>, Paris: \u00c9ditions Raison d\u2019Agir, 1999<\/p>\nGriswold, Charles S. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment<\/em>, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999<\/p>\nHegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy<\/em>, III, [1840] Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995 <\/p>\nJorion, Paul, Le secret de la chambre chinoise<\/em>, L\u2019Homme, 150: 177-202, 1999<\/p>\nPrice, Michael, Frequently Asked Questions about Many-Wor<\/em>lds, http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/Athens\/Acropolis\/1756\/everett.txt<\/p>\nSokal, Alan & Bricmont, Jean, Impostures intellectuelles<\/em>, Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997<\/p>\nTversky, Amos & Wakker, Peter, Risk Attitudes and Decision Weights<\/em>, Econometrica, 1995, vol. 63, i, 6: 1255-1280<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2000 I devoted a paper to some implications of the \u201cmany worlds\u201d interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett III in his Princeton thesis entitled \u201c\u2018Relative State\u2019 Formulation of Quantum Mechanics\u201d. At the time I had no notion of anybody else in philosophy interested in these issues. The article was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-of-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog_en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}