Dear Casey Blood,
A number of your points are easy to agree with-- for instance, "collapse of the wave-function" and "many worlds" seem to lack experimental means of verification. You state that "awareness cannot be ignored in physics. While difficult to frame experimentally, this seems intuitively obvious. I believe that the most significant problem in physics is that it fails to address awareness, so I would like to focus on this. You have developed your ideas well based upon your basic assumptions, but I would like to question two of these assumptions:
1.) That particles are not real, and
2.) That the Mind (the source of awareness) is non-physical.
Relevant to the first claim is that, in some sense, the wave-function represents "spreadout matter". You state that, in spite of the "spreadout" nature of the wave-function, "one and only one grain is exposed" and "we perceive a single particle-like trajectory in a cloud or bubble chamber." These are clearly particle like properties and consistent with the real properties: mass, charge, energy and momentum.
To get around the problem that a "spreadout" wave-function is only perceived as a "particle-like" reality, you then note that "the mathematics tells us they [the multiple grains hit by the spreadout wave-function] "exist" in entirely different, non-communicating universes. We perceive the events in only one of them, exactly as if we lived in one universe or another."
You also state that "it is not clear why the branch of the wave-function that has the particle on it is the one we are aware of." nevertheless, you conclude that the current state of physics is that, most likely,
"Only the wave function, with all its branches, physically exists."
If I understand this properly, from your perspective, it is the wave-function that is real, and therefore you are faced with the problem of explaining why all of the grains are hit by the spreadout wave-function, but only one grain is exposed. Clearly the 'non-communicating' nature of these universes prevents physical measurements and I am somewhat confused about how exactly this differs from "many worlds" interpretation of QM.
I find this hard to accept. Perhaps you are familiar with Alfred Korzybski's dictum:
"The Map is not the Territory."
In this case the particle appears to me to be the "territory" possessed of real physical attributes, while the wave-function is the "map", possessed of non-physical aspects such as being spread over space-time in several alternate universes.
This multi-branch character appears to me to be necessitated by the unpredictability of any specific measurement, that is, the essence of QM "probability" is the fact that outcomes of individual measurements are unpredictable, augmented by the fact that, at least for many important cases, the outcomes form a discrete set, not a continuum. If this is the reality [i.e., what we jointly perceive] then our physics theory problem is to draw a map [the wave function] that best describes this physical reality. Because the outcomes are discrete and exclusive [only one will be observed] we assign various 'exclusive' descriptors and this is best done with an orthogonal basis set. The sum of these individual map elements we term the state vector or wave-function and the goal is to derive the "best" map or wave function that corresponds to reality.
James Putnam asks in your forum: "What does a mathematical construct such as a wave function tell us that makes these properties real?"
It seems an inversion of logic to assume that a map containing all components is the fundamental reality rather than the territory which you clearly state is always perceived as a singular state/particle.
If we do assume that the singular (particle) territory is the reality and the multi-component state vector is the map, then the question becomes what causes the particle to "choose" one of the possible outcomes. There is widespread agreement that the behavior is not deterministic/predictable.
You conclude that, to avoid the no-hidden-variable, no-collapse, no-many-worlds barrier to awareness in each branch,
"there is always one quantum version of reality whose characteristics corresponds exactly - qualitatively and quantitatively - to our physical perceptions"
I consider this to acknowledge that we have an "ideal map" that accurately represents the territory. The various interpretations of QM are intended to "explain" this map, which consists of a multi-dimensional state vector, with each dimensional component or branch corresponding in your essay to another universe in which the relevant physics play out.
I believe you are lead to this interpretation by your assumptions concerning awareness.
From the particle perspective, the reality is that one particle hits one grain, but this grain could be one of many, so we need a way to cover all of the many-- this is what the wave-function does, but more explanation is needed.
As you state: QM prohibits the simultaneous perception of two versions of reality; QM does not say how the version we perceive is "selected"
If I have represented your essay accurately I would like to proceed to discuss the "awareness" aspects, beginning with your Non-Physical Mind Interpretation.
Edwin Eugene Klingman