In 2023, US-based science journalist Amanda Gefter claimed joint first place in FQxI's essay competition, which asked how science could be different. Gefter's was a philosophical essay that considered the subject-object distinction at the foundations of modern science. She argued that the QBist interpretation of quantum mechanics and the enactive approach to cognitive science provide examples of how to move beyond this view and "unsplit the world."
Gefter has developed her thinking further in a new preprint, "Enaction for QBists".
We've run a few items about QBism in the past: Mitch Waldrop interviewed one of its founders, Chris Fuchs, in our article "Painting a QBist Picture of Reality" and Fuchs made his own film in which he converses with fellow scientists and philosophers on the subject "Wine, Quantum and a Life Worth Living." QBism reframes quantum theory around the individual observer and the updating of their beliefs about a system.
In her paper, Gefter connects QBism and enactive theory, explaining: "Unlike mainstream cognitive science, which views cognition as computations on internal representations of the external world (and thus the mind as in the head), the enactive approach sees cognition as adaptive, embodied
action..." Taken together, she argues that QBism and the enactive approach offer "the possibility of a unified metaphysics—one that brings subject and object, mind and world, back together again."