QBism is not Cubism, Exactly

I discussed Quantum Bayesian theory here about three weeks ago. But now that I know what to look for, it has become easier to find more about it, so I come back to it.

Early this year, the William & Mary blog ran an interview with Hans Christian von Baeyer, who believes that QB-ism (which he pronounces "cubism" as in Picasso) is nothing less than the "future of physics." He regrets that advocates of QBism have yet to get it into physics textbooks. But there are "hundreds of articles and conference proceedings" that deal with it, so he is hoping admission into the canon, with the dozen or so older interpretations of quantum mechanics, will come soon.

Von Baeyer also makes reference to "an excellent article" that was added to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in December 2016. So, after finishing up the interview, I went there. The actual title of that article is evidence that this is an appropriate thing to be discussing in a blog named for William James' philosophy. For the article in the SEP is: "Quantum-Bayesian and Pragmatist Views of Quantum Theory."

Richard Healey of the University of Arizona is credited with authorship of this article. If I understand it (a big "if,") Healey breaks interpretations of quantum theory down into three broad camps: the ontic, the epistemic, and the pragmatic. The "ontic" say that the formulas of a quantum state describe physical reality. The "epistemic" say that the formulas describe "an agent's incomplete information about an underlying ontic state." The "pragmatic" physicists refuse to take sides in THAT divide, because they believe that humans are part of the underlying reality, that the know-er and the known are enmeshed. Bayesianism is one of the pragmatic views.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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