Quantum Coherence Ethics · A Pre-Ethical Philosophical Framework
Quantum Coherence Ethics
On the moral consequences of an uncollapased wave function
This is the public home of Quantum Coherence Ethics — a pre-ethical philosophical framework derived from the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The work does not begin with a moral claim. It begins with a conditional: if Hugh Everett III was right, then every prior ethical framework was constructed upon an incomplete description of what a person is.
Under the Many Worlds Interpretation, the wave function never collapses. Every quantum branch is real. A person, then, is not a singular locus of experience moving through time — a person is a distributed being: a single entity instantiated across every branch of the wave function sharing its causal origin. The implications for ethics are not minor adjustments. They are foundational.
Dedicated to Hugh Everett III (1930–1982), who was right.
§ 1.The Central Argument
QCE is a conditional framework. It does not assert that the Many Worlds Interpretation is true. It asserts that if MWI is true, the consequences for ethics are systematic and unavoidable. The argument has the following structure:
Premise I — The Physical Condition
If Hugh Everett III's formulation of quantum mechanics is correct, the universal wave function never collapses. Every quantum event produces a branching of the wave function, and every branch is equally real.
Premise II — The Ontological Consequence
Under this description, a person is not a singular entity. A person is a distributed being — one entity instantiated across the full set of branches sharing its causal origin. The boundaries of personal identity extend across the branching structure of the wave function.
Premise III — The Ethical Consequence
Every prior ethical framework — consequentialist, deontological, virtue-theoretic, contractarian — was constructed with a singular, locally-instantiated person as its basic unit. If that unit is wrong, the frameworks built upon it require reconstruction from the ground up.
∴ QCE is not a revision of existing ethics. It is a pre-ethical inquiry: an investigation of what the basic units of moral reasoning must be, before any moral reasoning can proceed.
§ 2.Rooms of the Temple
The site is organized as a temple. This page is the foyer. Each room below contains a distinct body of work. The visitor is invited to enter in any order.
§ 3.Orientation
This site is not a summary. It is not an introduction for general audiences. It is the working home of a philosophical project, and it assumes a reader willing to follow an argument wherever it leads.
The framework is conditional. Readers who reject the Many Worlds Interpretation outright will find the conditional unsatisfied and the conclusions moot. That is a coherent position. QCE does not argue for MWI — it argues from it.
Readers who accept MWI, or who are willing to entertain it as a serious physical hypothesis, are invited to follow the argument into its ethical consequences. Those consequences are the subject of this project.
-- QCE: The Conditional, stated plainly
IF Hugh Everett III was right
-- i.e., the wave function never collapses;
-- every branch is real
THEN a person is a distributed being
-- instantiated across all branches
-- sharing a causal origin
AND every prior ethical framework
-- consequentialist, deontological,
-- virtue-theoretic, contractarian
was working with an incomplete
description of what a person is
THEREFORE ethics must be reconstructed
from the ground up.