> Decoherence solves the preferred basis problem, not the hard problem of consciousness.
Ok, I guess I misunderstood the scope of "There's also nothing special about observing."
It's not clear to me if you (MWI) would say that rocks had defined positions when nobody was observing them - or whether the question of things having definite positions (and the very existence of those things) wouldn't even make sense in the absence of consciousness.
> Ok, I guess I misunderstood the scope of "There's also nothing special about observing."
There's nothing special about the physical processes constituting a scientific experiment. They're unitary evolution like everything else. Whether there's anything special about conscious experience (for my money: obviously yes) is outside the scope of physics.
> or whether the question of things having definite positions (and the very existence of those things) wouldn't even make sense in the absence of consciousness.
If you want to be perfectly precise, the MWI does not contain discrete things at all, any more than the Earth objectively has discrete continents and seas. But the most accurate map is not always the most useful one.
Ok, I guess I misunderstood the scope of "There's also nothing special about observing."
It's not clear to me if you (MWI) would say that rocks had defined positions when nobody was observing them - or whether the question of things having definite positions (and the very existence of those things) wouldn't even make sense in the absence of consciousness.