Barad, intentionality according to Bohr, and QMT

Stil in the first chapter of “Meeting Universe Half Way”  that impressed me so much from the getgo and new directions for my thinking are opening up as fast as they can. I like Barad’s exercise in analogical thinking, though she exposed such thinking as one of the major flaws in Frayn’s work in addition to unapologetically turning a blind eye to actual historicacl accounts. On page six, Barad writes about analagical thinking:
“analogical thinking (…) so often produced unsatisfactory understandings of the relevant issues.”

Later, she uses it to demonstrate what this kind of thinking can still produce if the thinker actually bothers to apply the theory correctly. She expands on the principle of complimnetarity proposed by Bohr, and shows how it leads to very different conclusions from Frayn’s. She writes,

“according to Bohr, we shouldn’t rely on the metaphysical presuppositions of classical physics (which Bohr claims is the basis for our common-sense perception of reality); rather, what we need to do is attend to the actual experimental conditions that would enable us to measure and make sense of the notion of intentional states ofmind. In the absence of such conditions, not only is the notion of an ‘‘intentional state of mind’’ meaningless, but there is no corresponding determinate fact of the matter. To summarize, the crucial point is not merely that intentional states are inherently unknowable, but that the very nature of intentionality needs to be rethought.” (pp. 21, 22)

Her exercise illustrates both the folly of Frayn’s logic and the way Bohr’s principle of complimentarity relate to philosophy. Brilliant!

So what of intentionality? As I read Barad’s application of this principle in the Frayns play context, i thought about how traditional research methods (both qual and quant) often focus on causality, the need to arrive at the root of things, but when it comes to social science these goals actually assume that an action or a behavior was intentional.

Here is another, more practical example: cover letters, or how abobut the times when i had to write several letters to explain why i want to be in this grad program or that one. Every time i struggled to find words. Now I realize that the trouble came from the obligation to explain my intentions, but intentions, as it turns out, are a very complicated matter. Each time, I managed to free a strand or two from the tangled up mess I encountered as I wrote, but I could never bear to go back to re-read my letters of intention after I submitted them. The thought of reading them again causes me a very-near-physical pain; they make me cringe. It is a highly reflexive process, and I muse at how other people do it. I never heard anyone complain about how writing a cover letter is a deeply conflicted activity.