Ah, OK. What makes sense to me is the agent as normative-linguistic-empirical subject in the “forum.” This empirical subject is “transcendent” with respect to the “consciousness” associated with that agent in the sense of being one more thing in the world, albeit in a special functional relationship with other things. Avenarius, Mach’s distant theoretical brother, is likewise great on this. Here’s a gem of a forgotten paper:
The “consciousness” “of” this agent is “nothing” ---- or rather the “being” or just the “bare presence” of world-from-the-POV-of-that-entangled-agent. For me, anyway, the “consciousness (non-)subject” must be distinguished from the agent who is “tracked in the regime of scorekeeping” and who doesn’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. Brandom’s work strongly influenced me. To be rational is to aim at a kind of performance on the social stage, AKA “the space of reasons.” Because this forum is fundamental, even ontology’s necessary-because-enabling entity, there is no “reducing” the forum into something “dead and static.” Normativity is basic. Of course I am not arguing for a particular authority. I’m just pointing out that presenting a “rational” theory presupposes all that rationality presupposes. For context, I’d say that the “lifeworld” is “most real” or “least neglect-able” for anyone trying to foreground or explicate this forum.
As I see it, getting a conceptual grip on consciousness is part of this. We intend the qualitative object. If I say “the coffee here is great,” then I am talking about the coffee that is “there” for my nose and tongue. But also, because I am talking to you, potentially to your nose and tongue. I can’t taste the coffee for you nor you for me. Likewise a scientific experiment involves mundane-qualitative physical objects and not “things in themselves” from “no POV.” The “scientific image” is “responsible” to perceptions that are “owned” in the sense of “mine” or “yours” or “his.” Yet language links dis-owned perceptions to our own sense of the world, so that I can update my belief by my experience of a verbal presentation of yours.
Probabilistic models, which you mention, can be understood in terms of situated expectation. I believe that event A is twice as likely as event B, and that either A or B will occur. I defend/justify my belief in terms of a histogram, etc. “I don’t see any other pattern except A happens twice as often as B in this context.”
Of course some people project “wave functions” as “truly real” “metaphysically-physical” entities “behind the scenes.” But to me this gets things backwards. Any predictive model is responsible to (qualitative, situated) experience, or one is doing “numerology” rather than (empirical) science, to put it a little crudely. I have to appropriate the science of my day personally. Because belief is “situated” or “owned” ( just like the perception of “mundanely” or “genuinely” physical objects ), the agent makes sense to me, as a loosely sketched “frame” of the physical theory. Especially if you view the model as a “tool” for guiding decisions. Whose decision ?
I know I’m dripping with references, but I can tell you are deep into the philosophy-science intersection. Did you ever check out operationalism ?
Especially important for Bridgman’s thinking was Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Bridgman credited an unexpected teaching assignment in 1914 for his first real encounter with special relativity, which gave him considerable distress as he tried to clarify the confusing conceptual situation surrounding the theory (Bridgman in Frank 1956, 76). At the heart of special relativity was Einstein’s recognition that judging the simultaneity of two events separated in space required a different operation from that required for judging the simultaneity of two events happening at the same place. Fixing the latter operation was not sufficient to fix the former, so a further convention was necessary, which Einstein supplied in the form of his operation of sending light beams from each of the events in question to the midpoint between their locations, to see if they arrive there at the same time. How superior this way of thinking was, compared to Isaac Newton’s declaration that he would “not define Time, Space, Place or Motion, as being well known to all” (quoted in Bridgman 1927, 4)! Bridgman felt that all physicists, including himself, had been guilty of unthinking uses of concepts, especially on the theoretical side of physics.
Bridgman’s sentiment arising out of these reflections, however, was not the familiar one of happy celebration of Einstein’s genius. He rather regretted the sorry state of physics which had necessitated Einstein’s revolution. Einstein showed what dangerous traps we could fall into by stepping into new domains with old concepts in an unreflective way. Anyone thinking in operational terms would have recognized from the start that the meaning of “distant simultaneity” was not fixed unless an operation for judging it was specified (Bridgman 1927, 10–16). In Bridgman’s view, Einstein’s revolution would never have been necessary, if classical physicists had paid operational attention to what they were doing.
His most famous work is a free pdf, if you are curious. I found it gripping right away.
Very cool. I’m very glad to be talking with someone who’s into this stuff.