Participatory Realism

Recently Cabello (arXiv:1509.04711) introduced a taxonomy of quantum interpretations with regard to what they attempt to say of reality. Fuchs contributed the term “participatory realism” for those interpretations which imply there is MORE to reality than any God’s eye (third-person) view on the universe can capture. These interpretations include Zeilinger and Brukner’s informational view, Rovelli’s relationalism,  Wheeler’s law-without-law, and in the most extreme, the QBism of Fuchs, Mermin, and Schack, where human agency is woven into the very fabric of physics. The importance of this effort is that it uncovers an overlooked element common to these interpretations and makes clear its positive nature: It recognizes first-person physics as not taking away from reality but ADDING to it, opening a vista on the quantum that indicates our universe is unfinished in a very deep sense.