Wheeler and Enactivism
Case in point is that after Rutherford discovered the nucleus physicists reached for the familiar -- a model based on classical celestial mechanics. Problems abounded, but still they stood their ground, with Sommerfeld even desperately appealing to Kepler's laws to account for the fine structure. It wasn't until the Ritz combination principle forced Heisenberg to abandon the classical approach in favor of a positivist approach (being the good Machian that he was) that everything fell into place.
The hard truth is that our brains evolved for survival on the savannah, not for understanding the quantum realm. We are hardwired for classical physics. To insist on a 'classical position' for an electron isn't being thorough -- it’s being biologically arrogant. Accepting that space and position lose their meaning at that scale wasn't admitting defeat -- it was the moment we finally stopped confusing our human metaphors with reality. Not willful ignorance but humility.
I have extracted some passages from Wikipedia on Merleau-Ponty and on Enactivism. I will present them here and then ask my questions.
Merleau-Ponty: The object of perception is immanently tied to its background -- to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads) [...] Each object is a "mirror of all others".
Enactivism: "Enaction is the idea that organisms create their own experience through their actions. Organisms are not passive receivers of input from the environment, but are actors in the environment such that what they experience is shaped by how they act." -- Edwin Hutchins (1996), Cognition in the Wild [...] In The Tree of Knowledge Maturana & Varela proposed the term enactive [...] They see enactivism as providing a middle ground between the two extremes of representationalism and solipsism. [...] Enaction has been seen as a move to conjoin representationalism with phenomenalism, that is, as adopting a constructivist epistemology, an epistemology centered upon the active participation of the subject in constructing reality.
Questions: Is there a possible connection here with Whitehead's process ontology, and with the relational turn in physics (I'm thinking particularly of Rovelli's RQM, Maldacena's AsD/CFT, and Ladyman's OSR)? Also with John Wheeler's PAP? (Wheeler wrote in one of his notebooks: "How are acts of observer-participancy fitted together? ... that's the central mystery ... Is there any point partway between all and none on this issue? Each of us in a private universe? Preposterous! Each of us see the same universe? Also perposterous!"
In summary, the tension is between Wheeler's "observer-creator" -- a mind that brings reality into being through conscious, quantum acts -- and Merleau-Ponty's and Thompson's "embodied subject" -- a body that co-constitutes a world of meaning not by creating it, but by existing within it and perceiving it. Wheeler’s universe is a cosmos of information waiting to be actualized by a question, while for the phenomenologists, reality is a world of meaning that is always already unfolding through our lived, embodied experience.
Didn't Wheeler deliberately avoid implicating consciousness in his ideas?
To put it simply, Wheeler proposed a universe that is participatory and information-based, but he didn't claim that human consciousness is the specific agent doing the participating. The participation is a more fundamental, physical act of information exchange. The critique from thinkers like Thompson or Merleau-Ponty remains potent, but it's important to target Wheeler's actual claim: that registration is fundamental, rather than the conscious subject.
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Counter-Argument (1): Merleau-Ponty's objection would be that Wheeler still privileges science He would likely say that Wheeler discovers that the observer cannot be removed from reality, but then he redefines the observer in terms supplied by physics. For Merleau-Ponty, the primary relation is not between a measuring device and a quantum system. It is between the lived body and the world. In "Phenomenology of Perception," he argues that scientific objects are abstractions built upon a more fundamental layer of embodied experience. Physics already presupposes perception, bodily orientation, practical engagement, language, and social practices. So Merleau-Ponty might ask Wheeler how measurement can constitute reality if the very possibility of measurement already presupposes a perceiving body inhabiting a meaningful world. In other words, Wheeler starts too late. He begins with physics and then discovers participation. Merleau-Ponty begins with participation itself as the condition for physics.
Response (1): Merleau-Ponty still privileges meaning. He begins with the experienced first-person perspective (FPP) and makes the assumption that this is the one exception in a manifold of unexperienced FPPs. And then he projects the meaning inherent in the experienced FPP onto all the other unexperienced cases -- an inductive inference based on a sample size of ONE. How can meaning constitue reality if the very possibility of meaning already presupposes that experience is a node in a network of other nodes? In other words, Merleau-Ponty starts too late. He begins with meaning and then discovers participation. Wheeler begins with participation as the condition for meaning.
Counter-Argument (2): Thompson's objection would be that Wheeler conflates cognition with measurement. He would likely push this criticism further. He repeatedly argues against what he calls the tendency to treat cognition as information processing or observation. Wheeler's "it from bit" suggests that physical reality somehow emerges from informational distinctions. Thompson would ask "Who or what makes information meaningful?" For enactivism, information is never fundamental. Meaning arises through the activity of living systems maintaining themselves in relation to their environment. A bacterium, a bird, and a human inhabit different meaningful worlds because each enacts significance differently. Thus Thompson would likely argue that Wheeler assumes the notion of information without explaining the biological and phenomenological conditions that make information possible.
Response (2): Information processing is simply a sequence of events, each of which entails the selection of one possibility over others. It doesn't matter if that process is stochastic, hard-coded on genes, conditioned by experience, or constrained by a capacity to entertain possible future scenarios -- all can be modeled as a sequence of binary decision points. "Physical reality" doesn't "somehow emerge from informational distinctions" -- rather informational distinctions are a fundamental characteristic of "physical reality." Neither one is 'derivative,' but rather they are different descriptions of the same underlying process.
Counter-Argument (3): Wheeler's picture often looks something like: Physical processes -> Measurement -> Information -> Reality as known. Merleau-Ponty and Thompson would reverse the direction: Living embodiment -> World-involvement Meaning -> Science and measurement as specialized practices. Physics is not the foundation of participation. Participation is the foundation of physics.
Response (3): One could also say meaning is not the foundation of participation -- participation is the foundation of meaning. These are just two ways of looking at the same circuit from a perspective of embeddedness in the circuit. The problem is insisting that one way is more fundamental than the other.
Counter-Argument (4): Thompson's most radical criticism would probably concern Wheeler's attempt to make physics explain its own conditions of possibility. Drawing from phenomenology, he often argues that scientific inquiry depends upon forms of lived experience that science itself cannot fully objectify because they are the background conditions of inquiry. He might say that Wheeler recognizes that observers are indispensable, but he still seeks to derive observers from the very physical universe whose intelligibility already presupposes observation. This creates a kind of circularity. The enactive response would be that observer and world arise together through ongoing embodied activity. One cannot explain one entirely in terms of the other.
Response (4): Phenomenological inquiry depends upon forms of meaning that experience cannot fully integrate because physical reality is the background condition of inquiry. Meaning cannot stand alone any more than information can stand alone. They arise together or they don't arise at all. One might seek to derive the physical world from the very meaning whose intelligibility already presupposes the physical world -- i.e. this too creates a kind of circularity. The Wheelerian response might be that the observer and world arise together through ongoing binary decisions. Neither is more fundamental than the other.
Counter-Argument (5): Wheeler says that the universe requires observers. Merleau-Ponty replies that observers are first embodied beings, not merely measurement events. Thompson adds that embodiment is first a biological and phenomenological process of sense-making, not an informational process describable solely by physics. So neither Merleau-Ponty nor Thompson would reject Wheeler's participatory insight. Rather, they would argue that Wheeler discovers participation within physics, whereas phenomenology and enactivism locate participation at a deeper level: the lived, embodied, sense-making relation between organism and world that makes physics itself possible.
Response (5): Embodied biengs are instances of the decision making process, albeit highly elaborate instances. 'Embodiment' entails only that the node has become sufficiently elaborate to enable the distinction between 'internal' and 'external' to emerge -- an "in here" and an "out there" -- the bedrock of 'meaning.' Wheeler discovers participation by moving from outside to in, whereas phenomenology and enactivism discover participation by moving from inside to out. Ultimately both perspectives vanish at their meeting point: structure -- the relational network, wherein all nodes depend on all other nodes for their very existence. 'Internal' and 'external' are just relations that emerge within that network.