QBism and the Subjective Stance

Abstract

AbstractPhenomenology has also been brought to bear on QM in the context of recent discussions over the approach known as ‘QBism’. This takes the theoretical formalism to be simply a device for predicting an agent’s future experiences, rather than as representing the world. Such a first-person perspective has been widely taken to mesh with the phenomenological stance, as usually understood. However, although advocates of QBism maintain that any slide into solipsism can be resisted, they struggle to accommodate what has been called the ‘kicks from the world’. Here it is argued that in order do so while remaining within a phenomenological framework, the correlationist feature identified by London and Bauer should be incorporated. Interestingly, one of the phenomenologist philosophers who is often cited in this specific context, Merleau-Ponty, took classes with Gurwitsch and drew on London and Bauer’s ‘little book’ in his own analysis of quantum physics.