On Minds that Interpret Quantum Mechanics: a Tribute to Henry Stapp

This essay describes what an anthropologist has learned from his ethnographic research with physicists who are engaged in quantum physics interpretation, including Henry Stapp. I argue that meta-physical considerations about “mind” among physicists often obscure the possibility of empirical research on concrete and individual minds and the role they play in quantum interpretation. Therefore, the philosophical rigor of quantum interpretation could benefit if individual interpreters could find an interest in discovering a manner of analyzing their own style of interpretation such that their own style would be communicable with others as a topic of conversation, rather than simply repeated dogmatically and argumentatively. Such considerations would require greater empirical attention to human thought itself, such that “mind” becomes less abstract and mystified, and thus more knowable and self-conscious.