Can Schrodingers cat be said to posses enough intelligence to collapse the probability wave?

Question

and would it do it before the box has been opened by an external viewer?

schrodingers cat in a box experiment states that the cat is in a superposition of states until the box is opened and observed, then it "decides" wether to be alive or dead as a result of the release of the radioactive particle.

at what point does the intelligence of the observer come into the equation? would mechanically opening the box and placing a stethoscope and tape recorder against the cats chest be enough to collapse the probability wave and determine the state of the cat? or does the observer have to be able to intelligently interpret the state of the cat?

and if the observer has to be intelligent, not purely mechanical, can the cat posess enough intelligence to collapse the wave, making the whole paradox pointless?

to summarize, can the cats own observation of its physical state be enough to collapse the wave?

Answer 1

I don't recommend buying into what these other people are spinning if you want to actually understand what this is all about.

Look at the following site, you'll need it to get an idea of what a bubble chamber is which you will need for what I will try to convey to you.

http://rd11.web.cern.ch/RD11/rkb/PH14pp/node17.html

Now, look at that bubble chamber picture (the one with all the lines, with a couple of cross-hairs and x's.)

See those lines? Those are the paths of charged particles through the bubble chamber. The LIQUID they are passing through was what COLLAPSED those particles' wave functions. That is why they look like particle lines and not some sort of interference pattern. Now, do you think some boiling vat of chemicals is more intelligent than a cat?

Events are what collapse wave functions, not observation by some intelligent being. That is unless you want to think of CF2Cl2 molecules as intelligent beings. But, hey, whatever floats your boat.

Some of your responders are attempting to argue a point which I, as a human, can't refute; that we can't say for sure whether or not the wave functions were collapsed until we look at the results of the bubble chamber, and thus THAT observation was what collapsed them.

Personally, I see that stance as grasping at straws. We're just part of the universe. We are NOT what decides what reality is. That last bit is just my humble opinion though. Believe what you want.

(Note: the one person made a really good point about the anthropic principle and that a cat can't percieve it's own death. However, if you followed what I said, you'll see that it doesn't really matter anyway).

Answer 2

If we consider that the box contains a superposition of a dead cat and a living cat, then the living cat will perceive itself as living and the dead cat will not.

In the particular case of Schrodingers Cat (where the options are life and death), this leads to an interesting application of the Anthropic Principle, in that the only measurement that the cat can make is that it is alive - since it cannot make the counter observation.

Hence, from the cat's point of view, the radioactive decay that causes its death will never occur.

The same would, of course, be the case if it were a human in the box. Could somebody try this and get back with whether they observed there own death?

Answer 3

Well, the cat would have to have at least enough intelligence to observe the probability wave. As near as we can tell, the wave collapses when it is observed; it may be that it spontaneously collapses during other interactions, but unless we observe it... we can't tell. If the cat is sitting there looking at the radioactive particle, that should be sufficient. But supposing the particle is well hidden from observation in a sealed device that triggers the poison gas if the particle decays, then the cat will have no way to directly observe the particle, and thus we would have to conclude that it is in a super-state of being both alive and dead untill we observe it.

Answer 4

No. Sorry. There are no paradoxes in the Schroedinger's Car scenario. It is simply an illustration of the basis of Quantum Mechanics.
That poor kitty is either alive or dead, potentially, at any given moment. By objectively observing it's state, you fix that state in reality, altering it from a potential to an actual state.
The observer must, by definition, be intelligent. Observation by a rhododendron would not count, I'm afraid.
Cheers, though, and nice try!

Answer 5

The cat is an example of a classical object. Within the box quantum probability collapses into a definite state (to the conscious observer), ie the waveform collapses. So-called mechanical means of measurng the quantum state of the cat: dead, live, alive/dead and dead/alive are meaningless until they convey their information to a conscious observer.
One could argue that consciousness is the ability to collapse quaternary quantum states into a definite classical state.

Answer 6

Even if it were a person instead of a cat the wave only collapses for an observer within the box. People outside the box know nothing until they have measured it. This remains true of all wavefunctions, they remain in existence until the system is changed or measured. It can be measured simply by looking at it.

Answer 7

What Schroedinger tried to say with this paradox is that wave functions don't give a complete view of reality. Of course the cat can't be dead and alive at the same time, Schrodinger accepted this fact as true and as a flaw for quantum theory to predict large scale phenomenon, so unluckily for the cat, it is not intelligent enough.

Answer 8

No. The cat wouldn't see anything in the box. The observer does not effect the situation until he actually opens the box.

Answer 9

depends how many other times the cat has been in the box. If it's 8 times previously..........

Answer 10

Well, twist my Twinkie, that is a good question. Some Dog people would argue that a cat does not have intelligence.

Seriously, good question.