Early Career Work in Progress Seminar (Wednesday - Week 10, TT25)
Wednesday 25 June, 4.30pm - 6:00pm
Ryle Room, Radcliffe Humanities
George Webster: Quantum-Bayesianism and Hegel: 'Mutual Recognition in the Philosophy of Physics'
Abstract: In recent years philosophers of physics have turned increasingly to the phenomenological tradition to make sense of quantum mechanics. The most prominent among this group advocate a view called “quantum Bayesianism” (“QBism” for short) and recently the work of Merleau-Ponty has caught their eye. Appealing to his later ontology of “flesh”, QBists describe agents who are constitutively embodied and embroiled within an external world and who are constitutively available to public scrutiny. In this paper, I trace the provenance of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas back to Hegel’s account of mutual recognition. Not only are there striking analogies to be found, but Merleau-Ponty clearly derived these analogous elements (at least in part) directly from his engagements with Hegel’s thought. This analysis: (i) reveals a new (and surprising) extension of Hegel’s influence into contemporary philosophy of physics; (ii) sheds light on the philosophical relationship between Hegel and Merleau-Ponty; (iii) opens up fresh conceptual resources to QBists (and other similarly open-minded philosophers of physics); and (iv) generates a deep irony concerning the distinction between the so-called “analytic” and “continental” traditions in philosophy. An additional aim of the paper is to provide a clear statement of the explanatory relationship between QBism and phenomenology.
