Quantum phenomenology and dynamic co-emergence

Abstract

Conceptual similarities between phenomenological descriptions of conscious experience and non-local effects as found in quantum mechanics are difficult to dismiss. Our engaged being-in-the-world, for instance when being immersed in reading, writing, or speaking, lacks a clear self-other distinction and mind-body separation as much as combined quantum systems lack separability of entangled states. Our sense of affordances or possibilities, for instance when choosing among several opportunities for action, is strongly reminiscent of superpositions or potentiality states as opposed to the factual reality of eigenstates. Since we can hardly give causally necessary and sufficient conditions for our actions causality breaks as much for intentional action as for state reduction, or wave function collapse, in the quantum world. Intentional action is always already entangled and therefore emerges from embodied and embedded comportment as much as intentionality modulates or submerges our involvement in the world. It is argued that understanding skilful coping as a mode of being-in-the-world is best conceptualized as a dynamically co-emerging whole prior to any mind-body and self-other distinction. Some elements of work practices in air traffic control are discussed as an illustrative application. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.