i realize that i am getting a bit pissy and obsessed, but man i just feel this wigner thing is wacky at a hundred junctures. he defines the "wave functions" that describe the universe as being concerned exclusively with "sense impressions": given an impression of a flash at t, there is x probability of an impression of a flash at t1. oh man i don't even know where to start on this. first of all, i don't believe in sense impressions, and there is a whole theory of perception here which is controversial, unargued, and for which there can be no scientific evidence in my view. i'll send you to j.l. austin's sense and sensibilia: then you can watch the flashes as the idea of sense impressions explodes. but anyway, if you just define science at the outset as being concerned exclusively with sense impressions, you again don't need anything else to establish observer-dependence. only it is an unbelievably wrong characterization of science, or at a minimum one that i believe wigner cannot get anywhere close to establishing.
'i have direct knowledge only of my sensations', writes wigner, at the same moment austin was blowing this up. so, would you say i have no direct knowledge of my cat? or i don't know it's raining; i know only that i am having certain sensations? funny but in the usual case i have no beliefs about, much less knowledge about, my own sensations. but i do know it's raining out there. it is not raining in my head, because little drops of water cannot fall from the sky in my head. here's an assertion: i know that it is raining outside as directly as i can know anything.
materialism, argues wigner, is 'incompatible with quantum theory'. why? because we can doubt the existence of the material world but we can't doubt the existence of our own consciousness and the sense impressions allegedly contained therein. i don't even know where to start here either. that surely has nothing to do with quantum theory; it's just descartes or epistemological foundationalism based on sense contents in a representational theory of mind. i believe this whole position has been exploded within philosophy, but even if it hasn't been, surely we can see that wigner (a) isn't doing science, (b) is deploying uncritically a series of highly problematic philosophical claims, and (c) does nothing at all to defend those claims. (to defend them, if they were not indefensible, would take a whole career.)
