On Whether People Have the Capacity to Make Observations of Mutually Exclusive Physical Phenomena Simultaneously

Abstract

It has been shown by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen that in quantum mechanics either one of two different wave functions predicting specific values for quantities represented by non-commuting Hermitian operators can characterize the same physical existent, without a physical interaction responsible for which wave function occurs. This result means that one can make predictions regarding mutually exclusive features of a physical existent. It is important to ask whether people have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive phenomena. Our everyday experience informs us that a human observer is capable of observing only one set of physical circumstances at a time. Evidence from psychology, though, indicates that people may have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive physical phenomena, even though this capacity is not generally recognized. Working independently, Sigmund Freud and William James provided some of this evidence. How the nature of the quantum mechanical wave function is associated with the problem posed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is addressed at the end of the paper.