Dualistic perspectives are deeply ingrained into our modern society and at the root of our reckless exploitation and destruction of planet earth, something which would be unthinkable within an animistic worldview. I here make the point that the contrast between dualism and animism is mirrored, to an almost frightening precision, in the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Perhaps, this explains why “the discipline of quantum foundations is in a miserable mess”.^{[anonymous private communication]}

Required background: Some familiarity with the quantum measurement problem.

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Recently, Teresa Reinhard recommended me to read Jason Hickel’s book “Less is More — How degrowth will save the world”, which I can safely praise as one of the best and most important books of our times. Among many other things, Hickel explains why dualism provides the moral backbone to justify our suicidal economic system based on the destruction of nature and the exploitation of workers (including slavery).

Reading Hickel’s thoughts about how deeply ingrained dualistic ideas are into our society, I start pondering whether they also influence how we think about physics, and I start to realize that this leads me into a deep abyss…

In this post, I will focus on interpretations of quantum mechanics, one of the big (if not the biggest) open debates at the intersection of physics and philosophy, whose resolution probably has major consequences not only on our worldview but also on technical disciplines such as quantum gravity.

Unfortunately, my impression is that the debates in quantum foundations are not based on objective or rational arguments alone. Instead, they seem strongly influenced by social, political, historical, economical and religious ideas—and not acknowledging them properly hinders us discussing the quantum measurement problem in an open, transparent and fair way.

But before we turn quantum, let’s briefly review what dualism and animism is…

Dualism

As with all the philosophy slang, there are many shades of grey, but, roughly speaking, dualism tries to draw a rigid boundary between what is considered “human” and what is “non-human”.

In this view, human’s are considered superior, they are divine, have a soul, free will, feelings, agency—whereas non-humans (whether they are animals, plants or even rocks, rivers, etc.) are reduced to the sum of their parts and viewed as something mechanistic without real feelings or intentions. In other words, there is a subject-object divide between humans and non-humans (hence the word “dualism”) and nature is reduced to a mere “environment”, like a stage in a theater, on which we, the human subjects, perform what really matters.

It doesn’t take much effort to realize that such a worldview is ideally suited to promote and justify an economic logic—you can call it capitalism if you’re not afraid of—centered around eternal growth^{[in fact, eternal exponential growth]} and based on externalizing and disregarding the real costs that this entails for the “environment”. Let’s quote some of our beloved thinkers to make clear what’s going on (remarkably, these thinkers lived at the same time when capitalism was on the rise):

But if a man endeavour to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition […] is without doubt both a more wholesome thing and a more noble than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences.

Francis Bacon

And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.

René Descartes

[So] far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as the means to an end. That end is man.

Immanuel Kant

Still not convinced? Well, then, let’s quote God:

Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

Genesis

Moreover, dualists went even further: They also declared your body as a secondary external environment and only the mind or soul matters (just think of Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”). This mind-matter dualism then offers the perfect moral justification to exploit human workforce in addition to exploiting nature.

And guess what: Slaves were thought of possessing not even a “mind”. They were mere objects or things, which provides the moral justification of colonialism (in the words of Aimé Césaire colonization is “thingification”).

Animism

Animism is the antagonist of dualism by radically declaring that everything is deeply connected. There is no naturally given intrinsic subject-object divide and no hierarchy or superiority.

Animism views animals and plants (and often even rivers, rocks, mountains, oceans, etc.) as globally connected actors, and not as mere background. Indeed, recent struggles to give rivers universal rights has received some global attention (though nobody wonders why companies count legally as persons).

Obviously, if you share an animistic worldview, the current ecocide must create such a strong cognitive dissonance in you that it becomes literally unbearable. Hence, if animism were the dominant worldview, no economic logic based on eternal exponential growth and reckless exploitation would be tolerated by the people.

Importantly, animism does not imply that you are not allowed to “take” from nature. Yes, you are even allowed to kill animals! The important point is that animism demands to find a balance. By taking from nature, you take at the same time the responsibility to give something back, to take care of it.

It probably does not come as a big surprise that many societies, who found a healthy balance with the ecosystem they lived in, had animistic worldviews. This is, for instance, true for many of the indigenous peoples. Indeed, some indigenous peoples got the special attention of researchers because they have no word for “nature”. This sounds crazy to us, but every minute I think about it, it makes more sense…

Quantum interpretations

Okay, time to get back to the interpretations of quantum mechanics. That questions revolving around mind-body dualism are strongly related to quantum mechanics should be clear at least since the (in)famous paper of Wigner and his friend.

So, let’s directly delve into the various interpretations of quantum mechanics (to be accurate: many of them are not mere “interpretations” but actually different “theories”). I will try to order them by starting from the most dualistic and ending with the most animistic version.

• QBism. Certainly the top of the iceberg with you alone as the perfect rational agent. Everything around you are just experiences. Those can be described by the laws of quantum mechanics, but you divine creature does not obey these laws. Hey, just close your eyes during the weather report and climate change ceases to exist. How liberating!
• Collapse (by consciousness). A close runners-up. While you believe that there is something really out there, your mind has the power to collapse the wave function as soon as it gets spooky. How comforting it is that you do not need to care about this detached weird wobbly quantum world out there…
• Collapse (by physical mechanisms). This gets already a bit more balanced as there is at least no special role for humans per se. But still, it is based on a very strong dualism between the micro- and macroworld. Luckily, we belong to the latter and quantum mechanics gives us all the tools to rule about the former.
• Consistent histories. The first truly balanced mix with no a priori dualistic divide between human/nonhuman, micro/macro, or whatever. Nevertheless, it is still compatible with dualistic thinking in other disciplines. Establishing a clear separation between observer/observed, subject/object, human/non-human does not contradict the formalism.
• De Broglie-Bohm/hidden variables. Very similar to the previous formalism as it has no build-in dualistic divide but is still compatible with one. Perhaps a little more animistic as it does not question the fundamental validity of Schrödinger’s equation.
• Unitary QM (many worlds or decoherent histories). The first animistic interpretation. By accepting Schrödinger’s equation without exception, it follows (by linearity and the tensor product structure of subsystems) that we are inevitably entangled with the rest of the world. And at least in our current understanding, entanglement is the strongest correlation you can have in the Universe. Wow, unitary quantum mechanics proves animism!
• Unitary QM (relational). The same as before, but this reading is particularly focused on the entangled relations within our Universe (the “relative states”). These relations are mutually co-constitutive and cannot be subtracted out—very similar to Barad’s “agential intra-actions” from which Barad even derives an ethnic responsibility of us for the rest of the world (and vice versa if you like).

Maybe…

…you think I went a bit off the rail by accusing QBists of being climate change deniers? Well, I did not really do this and everything has to be taken cum grano salis.

But if I were a rational Bayesian agent I would still claim that—in absence of any further information—a QBist is more likely a climate change denier than a many worlds proponent. Of course, “in absence of any further information” is an oversimplifying assumption for this complex situation. But that’s exactly my point: debates about the foundations of quantum mechanics are emotional and guided by complex irrational motives that are hard to understand. So, it’s good to uncover and question them.

And I would go even a step further. Suppose there really is some natural law justifying some mind-matter duality from the start (even though, as far as I know, all the evidence we have points into exactly the opposite direction). Then, at least for the moment, can we not forget about this and save planet earth first?