Acknowledgments ................................................. x
1 Preface to a quantum social science .......................... 1
Why are we here? ............................................. 1
Introduction ................................................. 2
The causal closure of physics ................................ 7
Classical social science .................................... 11
The anomaly of consciousness ................................ 14
The mind-body problem .................................... 14
Intentionality and consciousness ......................... 18
The threat of vitalism ................................... 21
The anomaly of social structure ............................. 22
Where is the state? ...................................... 23
The threat of reification ................................ 25
As if explanation and unscientific fictions ................. 26
My central question, and answer in brief .................... 28
Re-inventing the wheel? ..................................... 34
Situating your observer ..................................... 36
Part I. Quantum theory and its interpretation .................. 39
Introduction ................................................ 39
2 Three experiments ........................................... 43
The Two-Slit Experiment ..................................... 43
Measurement is creative .................................. 46
Collapse of the wave function ............................ 46
Complementarity .......................................... 48
The Bell Experiments ........................................ 50
The Delayed-Choice Experiment ............................... 54
3 Six challenges .............................................. 58
The challenge to materialism ................................ 59
The challenge to atomism .................................... 60
The challenge to determinism ................................ 62
The challenge to mechanism .................................. 63
The challenge to absolute space and time .................... 65
The challenge to the subject-object distinction ............. 66
4 Five interpretations ........................................ 70
The problem and a meta-interpretive framework ............... 71
Instrumentalism: the Copenhagen Interpretation .............. 73
Realism I: materialist interpretations ...................... 76
The GRW Interpretation ................................... 76
The Many Worlds Interpretation ........................... 77
Realism II: idealist interpretations ........................ 81
The Subjectivist Interpretation .......................... 81
The Bohm Interpretation .................................. 85
Part II Quantum consciousness and life ......................... 91
Introduction ................................................ 91
5 Quantum brain theory ........................................ 95
Your quantum brain .......................................... 96
The Frцhlich tradition ................................... 98
The Umezawa tradition ................................... 101
Assessing the current debate ............................... 102
6 Panpsychism and neutral monism ............................. 109
Panpsychism ................................................ 111
Background .............................................. 112
Defining 'psyche,' aka subjectivity ..................... 114
Projecting subjectivity through the tree of life ........ 116
.. And then all the way down ......................... 119
The combination problem and quantum coherence ........... 123
Neutral monism and the origin of time ...................... 124
7 A quantum vitalism ......................................... 131
The materialist-vitalist controversy ....................... 132
Life in quantum perspective ................................ 137
Cognition ............................................... 139
Will .................................................... 139
Experience .............................................. 141
Why call it vitalism? ...................................... 143
Part III. A quantum model of man .............................. 149
Introduction ............................................... 149
8 Quantum cognition and rational choice ...................... 154
Quantum decision theory .................................... 157
Order effects in quantum perspective .................... 157
Paradoxes of probability judgment ....................... 159
Quantizing preference reversals ......................... 161
Rationality unbound? ....................................... 164
Quantum game theory: the next frontier ..................... 169
9 Agency and quantum will .................................... 174
Reasons, teleology, and advanced action .................... 175
Free will and quantum theory ............................... 182
The philosophical literature ............................ 183
The Libet experiments ................................... 185
10 Non-local experience in time ............................... 189
The qualitative debate on changing the past ................ 191
The Epistemological view ................................ 192
The Ontological view .................................... 193
The physics of changing the past ........................... 198
Part IV. Language, light, and other minds ..................... 207
Introduction ............................................... 207
11 Quantum semantics and meaning holism ....................... 210
Composition versus context in meaning ...................... 212
Quantum contextualism ...................................... 215
12 Direct perception and other minds .......................... 222
The problem of perception .................................. 223
The dual nature of light ................................... 226
Holographic projection and visual perception ............... 228
Semantic non-locality and intersubjectivity ................ 230
The theory of mind debate ............................... 230
Semantic non-locality and other minds ................... 233
Three objections considered ............................. 237
Part V The agent-structure problem redux ...................... 243
Introduction ....................... 243
13 An emergent, holistic but flat ontology .................... 247
Supervenience meets externalism ............................ 250
Agents, structures, and quantum emergence .................. 255
Downward causation in social structures .................... 260
14 Toward a quantum vitalist sociology ........................ 267
The holographic state ...................................... 268
The state as an organism ................................... 273
The state and collective consciousness ..................... 275
The politics of vitalist sociology ......................... 281
Conclusion ................................................. 283
Night thoughts on epistemology ............................. 284
Too elegant not to be true? ................................ 288
Bibliography .................................................. 294
Index ......................................................... 345
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