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Originally Posted by Interesting Ian  What is FAPP? Many materialists that I have communicated with on the jref forums insist that decoherence does solve the measurement problem. |
FAPP is short for "For All Practical Purposes".
On the measurement problem I'll just quote Stapp's book again;
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It is indeed sometimes claimed that the interaction of a system with its environment effectively solves the “measurement” problem (which is essentially the problem of how to connect the physically/mathematically described aspects of quantum theory to human experience.). However, the principal investigators of the effects of this interaction (e.g., E. Joos, 1996; D. Zeh, 1996; W. Zurek, 2002) make no such strong claim. Joos (p.3) emphasizes that even when the interaction with the environment is included one is left with not one single classical world but with a host of possible classical worlds “thus leaving the measurement problem essentially unsolved (unless one is willing to accept some variant of the Everett interpretation)”.
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Later on (p. 20-21) he (Zurek) returns to this problem:
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“why do we perceive just one of the quantum alternatives?”; “the process of decoherence we have described above is bound to affect the states of the brain…decoherence applies to our own “state of mind.”; “There is little doubt that the process of decoherence sketched in this paper is an important element of the big picture… There is even less doubt that this rough outline will be further extended. Much work needs to be done, both on technical issues…and on problems that require new conceptual input (such as … answering the question of how an observer fits into the big picture.)
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So it's clear from the principal investigators on decoherence that it is not by itself sufficient to solve this problem beyond FAPP.