[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

The orthodox interpretation talks of 'observations' which need human (or presumably animal) consciousness. Does anyone honestly think that the physicists at Copenhagen didn't notice that they were incorporating consciousness into their theory!

Are you sure those observations can't be interactions with other objects?

Copenhagen is an interpretation. Show me the math that describes human consciousness.

... and unfortunately the word 'quantum' does occasionally get uttered by someone who don't know what it means!!

It is a rare foray into gobbledygook that does not begin
with a tribute to quantum mechanics. ---Jamie Whyte

I go with Chalmers when he says that the universe must contain 'mind stuff' that interacts with matter, but which is not reducible to existing physics. For this to solve the mind body problem, it seems to me that it is probably going to be a form of irreducible consciousness. Yes, that is something of a cop-out, but no more so than writing down the inverse square law and stating that there is an invisible gravitational field that just obeys that law for no particular reason.

Way more so. Gravity is fairly simple. This irreducible consciousness is going to have to be full-blown human-style consciousnesses. Otherwise the mechanistic construction of human consciousness from simple components will not give the libertarians what they want.

Possibly we are iterating towards the crux of this matter (as in your fear of mechanism link, except the other way round). Anything that can qualify as a mind, can't be reduced to mechanism.

Like I just said.

~~ Paul