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There is an underlying assumption in the social sciences that consciousness and social life are ultimately classical physical/material phenomena. In this ground-breaking book, Alexander Wendt challenges this assumption by proposing that consciousness is, in fact, a macroscopic quantum mechanical phenomenon. In the first half of the book, Wendt justifies the insertion of quantum theory into social scientific debates, introduces social scientists to quantum theory and the philosophical controversy about its interpretation, and then defends the quantum consciousness hypothesis against the orthodox, classical approach to the mind-body problem. In the second half, he develops the implications of this metaphysical perspective for the nature of language and the agent-structure problem in social ontology. Wendt's argument is a revolutionary development which raises fundamental questions about the nature of social life and the work of those who study it

AbstractPart II responds to some of my critics' substantive concerns about QMASS. However, to sharpen that discussion I first introduce the idea of classical and quantum physical instantiation tests or 'PITs'. PITs are a thought experiment taking advantage of the causal closure of physics. To encourage critical self-reflection on the usually tacit ontological assumptions of our theories, PITs invite social scientists to translate their mostly qualitative, folk psychological arguments into physical descriptions, meeting classical and quantum constraints respectively, to see which feels more appropriate to the case at hand. With this diagnostic tool in hand, the paper addresses criticisms of QMASS in five areas: (1) the threat of physics reductionism; (2) the potential for epistemic repression stemming from the realist nature of QMASS' argument; (3) doubts that a quantum approach can support a genuine notion of human freedom; (4) the place of ethics and normativity in social and international life; and (5) implications for graduate methods training and quantum pedagogy more generally.

Todas las teorías de relaciones internacionales se basan en teorías sociales de relaciones entre agentes, procesos y estructuras sociales. Las teorías sociales no determinan el contenido de nuestra teoría internacional, pero estructuran las preguntas que nos hacemos sobre la política mundial y nuestros enfoques en las respuestas a esas cuestiones. El principal asunto que se cuestiona en los debates sobre teoría social es el tipo de fundamento que puede ofrecer el conjunto de preguntas y las estrategias de investigación más provechosas para poder explicar los cambios revolucionarios que parecen estar ocurriendo en el sistema internacional desde finales del siglo XX ; All international relations theories are based on social theories about agents, processes and social structures. Social theories do not determine the content of our international theory but they structure our questions about global politics and our answers approaches to those questions. The main topic in the social theory debates is what kind of fundament can offer the set of questions and which are the most profitable research strategies in order to be able to explain the revolutionary changes that seems to be going on since the end of the XXth century

It may be that states are not persons, but there is nothing in Peter Lomas' dismissive critique of my article that would help us decide one way or the other. Lomas never engages the central points of my argument, and does not appear to have read the relevant literature. This is too bad, since Lomas' evident passion about the question of whether states are persons is fully justified. At stake empirically is our ability to explain important patterns in world politics, like balancing or the tendency of states to follow international law, which seem to presuppose state persons. And normatively, state personhood has many politically charged implications, whether limiting the possibilities for individual self-realisation, as emphasised by Lomas, or providing a metaphysical ground for claims of group rights, collective responsibility and guilt, reparations, and the like. So the stakes are high, and having been neglected in IR for so long our current understanding of the issue is preliminary at best. Passion, however, is no substitute for clear thinking, and here Lomas muddies the water considerably. As such I welcome the opportunity to respond. Since Lomas concentrates on my easy case – collective intentionality – I shall do likewise, defending the reality of only that aspect of state personhood, thus bracketing whether states are also super-organisms with collective consciousness.

Todas las teorías de relaciones internacionales se basan en teorías sociales de relaciones entre agentes, procesos y estructuras sociales. Las teorías sociales no determinan el contenido de nuestra teoría internacional, pero estructuran las preguntas que nos hacemos sobre la política mundial y nuestros enfoques en las respuestas a esas cuestiones. El principal asunto que se cuestiona en los debates sobre teoría social es el tipo de fundamento que puede ofrecer el conjunto de preguntas y las estrategias de investigación más provechosas para poder explicar los cambios revolucionarios que parecen estar ocurriendo en el sistema internacional desde finales del siglo XX.

All international relations theories are based on social theories about agents, processes and social structures. Social theories do not determine the content of our international theory but they structure our questions about global politics and our answers approaches to those questions. The main topic in the social theory debates is what kind of fundament can offer the set of questions and which are the most profitable research strategies in order to be able to explain the revolutionary changes that seems to be going on since the end of the XXth century. ; Todas las teorías de relaciones internacionales se basan en teorías sociales de relaciones entre agentes, procesos y estructuras sociales. Las teorías sociales no determinan el contenido de nuestra teoría internacional, pero estructuran las preguntas que nos hacemos sobre la política mundial y nuestros enfoques en las respuestas a esas cuestiones. El principal asunto que se cuestiona en los debates sobre teoría social es el tipo de fundamento que puede ofrecer el conjunto de preguntas y las estrategias de investigación más provechosas para poder explicar los cambios revolucionarios que parecen estar ocurriendo en el sistema internacional desde finales del siglo XX.

To say that states are 'actors' or 'persons' is to attribute to them properties we associate first with human beings – rationality, identities, interests, beliefs, and so on. Such attributions pervade social science and International Relations (IR) scholarship in particular. They are found in the work of realists, liberals, institutionalists, Marxists, constructivists, behaviouralists, feminists, postmodernists, international lawyers, and almost everyone in between. To be sure, scholars disagree about which properties of persons should be ascribed to states, how important state persons are relative to other corporate persons like MNCs or NGOs, whether state persons are a good thing, and whether 'failed' states can or should be persons at all. But all this discussion assumes that the idea of state personhood is meaningful and at some fundamental level makes sense. In a field in which almost everything is contested, this seems to be one thing on which almost all of us agree.