[Newspoetry] Quantum Philosophy: Post-Modern Computing

[Donald L Emerick]

A Book review in the NYT, that I read today, of recent vintage, although I have already chucked the email that contained the reference that located the article for me by the time that I came back to thinking of the topic, unintentionally, in my view, which is to say that something continued to gnaw at me, after I had read the article, taken the time to flip from one web state to another web state, and pass my eyes over the text in question, a sign surely that I was already disposed to be bothered by a text that purported to talk about such topics in such terms.  But, much of the time, the way that we think we dispose of such potential interruptions to our consciousness is that we do flip over, to look at a possible irritant, briefly, cursorily, dismissively, to assure ourselves that we have not been too dishonest in our desire to focus our attentions elsewhere upon more important topics -- a topoi that I understand by the idealized references of intention and relevance.  I look to see that nothing much threatens me, or promises me, over there, in that direction, from there in the bush, from which place the ambiguous sound rose to fall on my ears, to rouse me slightly from my restive state, that incessantly surveys all that it is round about it, looking for easy prey and fervently desiring to avoid being the same.

Quantum computing, the thought came back me -- ah, yes, as I read the openings of Veils, containing passages from Cixous and Derrida, that could be a way to describe the deconstruction projects in reading (but, in my language, listening) to the talks that others trace out for us.  I had always wanted to learn to listen, even as a small child -- and I had made great efforts along those lines, thinking that closely following the texts of others would, like a literalist, perhaps, would be possible, make me sound as wise at the persons who were wise in my own eyes.  And, whatever one sounds like, well, how could one not be the very thing that one imitates: it would just be a slow matter of a self-adjusting, ever-shrinking convergence -- run the process for long enough and who could tell the difference between the fake and the real?  There would, of course, always be me and already be Plato, distinguishable, in the absolute, but only in theory; for all practical purposes, he and I would be the same.  Shakespeare, too, would be no different than I, though he had pondered differently in the "Brutus or Caesar" question, or, as it is later styled by Buber, the I or Thou distinction is only one that you and I alone know enough to make, for ourselves.  Everyone else, in this bedlam, thinks that he alone is not Napoleon, not Caesar, nor Shakespeare, nor Plato, nor even me.

This is not to say that I do not, sometimes, forget who I am.  Nor, is it even to say that sometimes I do not know who I am.  Those are all part of the business of being aware of the quantum computations, and accepting the random answers that it sometimes spits, quite irrationally, out of its mouth, because there is no apparent reason for any one answer to be preferred over any other answer that might be given, except that we invest the environment of any answer with a great many subterfuges that we call the conditions upon which that answer shall be deemed to be acceptable, shall be deemed to count one way or the other, according to the environing accompaniments that it displays.  We often call these subterfuges naming, because we thereby hide away all the conditions, so as to pretend, self-righteously, that the thing in itself is capable of appearing before us, nakedly absolute.

But, here, I tirelessly mimic Kant's laughter at such mythological idealisms -- even as I also adopt his defense of reason: what else would we have done?  This double entendre of intended reality simply says what Heidegger said that Leibnitz expounded, about the extreme difficulty one faces in avoiding reason's call to being: that nothing happens without a reason.  Nature is a fait accomplis unless one alters nature, or how one fits into nature, to make a better fit between man and nature.  But, in the latter direction lies metaphysics, for one would have the gnawing suspicion that man, alone, never seems to fit into nature.  The first defense against metaphysics retreats from man, by suggesting that somewhere there is about man that nature does not love.  Examining that j'ne qua non pas du tu (if I spoke other than a broken and borrowed, hand-me-down French, this would say "I do not know what to call it"),  the line of retreat passes itself into some kind of vitalism.  There is, though the matter is quite difficult in fact to pin down, some (set of) difference(s) between being alive and being dead, but this property (trait, characteristic) is one that is common to all objects and subjects.  On one side of the divide there is the object, but the subject lies on its own side, aware of this difference, in some sense, while the object does not have the capacity to know, to feel, to sense, to oppose this question of the divide.  We go a step further, in vital nature, then; we come to the moral question and say that, of all vital things, man not only knows this divide is there, but thinks that it has some significance.  No other animal, says man, haughtily, seems to have the idea that this divide presents itself as a thing that could be put in question.  Man is the moral animal, concludes the metaphysician's argument.

Quantum philosophy recognizes a random answer when it sees one, I suppose.  I don't know.  I guess I'll have to justify what i said, attach some conditions to this statement, saying why nihilism may not be the best answer.  Maybe, what I can say is just the same, a defense of the Epicurean: I'm having to much fun right now to be bothered by the fact that it might only be a game.   Indeed, even if it is only a game, isn't that the most marvelous thing, the most marvelous game that could be invented?  If it isn't, show me another one that is better; show me how it is better.  Maybe, I'll want to change, to play your game with you, or maybe you'll want to change games, and play with me.  And, even, maybe, there is a better game for both of us, just waiting for us to make it up, to make it up, as in our next make-believe game.  But, we will not call our make-believe game "religion."  We have a better name for make-believe games: we can call it (post-modern) computing, PMC, or quantum philosophy.

thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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