A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum; the Nature of Reality in Social Sciences

In recent years, the concept of time and space in human interaction has been disappearing, leading to an increase in the application of quantum theory in the analysis of political, social, and economic phenomena. However, the use of quantum theory in social sciences has been primarily instrumentalist in nature. For a quantum theory to be truly useful in social sciences, it must cover the theoretical gaps within the field. The application of quantum theory in social sciences will be useful when it can cover the theoretical gaps in it. One of the most significant theoretical gaps of social sciences over the last century has been the lack of consensus on the method of studying social phenomena; resulting in the formation of different of various paradigms and methods to study it. This article argues that the root cause of this lack of agreement lies in the concept of social reality; as it is not independent of the intentional actions of individuals. This raises the question of why social sciences, unlike classical natural sciences, are dependent on the intentional actions of individuals. 
To answer this question, the article introduces an analytical framework called the “quantum phenomenological approach,” which is based on idealist interpretations of quantum theory. This approach allows for the inclusion of an individual's intentional actions in their decision-making process, resulting in a reconstruction of social reality in such a way that its relation is determined with the intentional actions from a first-person perspective. This approach assumes a primitive self-awareness for the quantum particle, where reality is considered as a combination of the wave function and its collapse; in a way that the cognition of the quantum particle, its intentionality, and its experience are considered as the wave function, the cause of the collapse and the process of wave function collapse, respectively. Similarly, a quantum model of an individual's decision-making process can be presented, incorporating his intentional actions (the cause of the collapse of the decision wave function) and the experimental background (the cause of the decision wave function). The most significant implication of this quantum model is that an individual's intentional behavior is certain from the first-person perspective and his decisions are optimal from his point of view at that moment, but inherently uncertain and unpredictable for an observer in the third person.
Redefining the concept of social reality using the “quantum phenomenological approach” offers several advantages, including recognizing the individual's agency and intentionality in their decision-making system, acknowledging the ontological difference between cause and reason, and the possibility of integrating holistic and individualistic approaches in a different and novel way from the common approaches formed after the 1970s in social sciences. While the whole (wave function) has causal power in the “quantum phenomenological approach,” it only includes potential states and the real state emerges when the individual applies his (her) agency and the wave function collapses. Therefore it can be shown that the reality in social sciences, unlike the classical empirical and natural sciences, is dependent on the intentional actions of the individual. In the classical empirical sciences, the researcher studies an inanimate substance without agency and intentional action; therefore, from the first-person perspective, the quantum reality is the same as the classical reality. What remains is the cognition of a person as a third-person observer of that classical reality. If the classical reality experienced by the observer is considered a quantum entity, then the researcher's perception will be dependent on the empirical context. However, the researcher’s perception can be classified into two categories consistent and inconsistent experience according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. In classical empirical sciences, by controlling and repeating physical and environmental conditions of the experiment, one can overcome the problem of dependence on the empirical context. Because the uncertainty in this science only originates from the observation of the researcher (quantum person), making the experience consistent could solve the problem, attribute stable quantitative and qualitative features to the observations.
In contrast, in social sciences, the situation is much more complicated. In these sciences, the origin of uncertainty is not only due to the intentional actions of the observers and their perception’s dependence on the empirical context, but also the agency and intentionality of the participating individuals participating in the social phenomenon as reality. Therefore, in such a world, it will not be possible to define and recognize social concepts as a common reality due to the inherent uncertainty of an individual’s decisions for an observer in the third person. This means that the definition and recognition of social realities requires a prerequisite called the institution. In fact, in a quantum model, institutions are the wave functions of shared mental states between individuals to predict their behavior for others. While the process of observing in social sciences can also be divided into consistent and inconsistent experiences, it is not possible to control human environments similar to laboratory conditions to overcome the consequences of decision-making’s dependence on empirical context. As a result, the inconsistent experiences that occur in human environments can act as the primary destabilizer of previous institutions. In such a world, the indicators and concepts attributed to social realities, which have an institutional nature, will also be affected by the consequences of the primary destabilizer, creating the transition duration in institutional changes. Therefore, social realities do not have an objective nature as realists consider. Although the mind plays a fundamental role in the formation of reality, as the interpretivists see, reality is not completely mental in nature.
In contrast to classical physics, which does not account for self-awareness as a natural, biological, and physical entity different from matter, quantum theory introduces concepts such as entanglement and non-locality. The concepts have been experimentally confirmed through Bell's Delayed-Choice experiments, providing the possibility of considering subatomic particles as possessing a primitive form of mentality and self-awareness.
This shift toward physicalizing consciousness without it being considered as a byproduct of classical matter has significant implications for the social sciences, potentially allowing for a return to the philosophy of consciousness rather than the philosophy of language. From the analytical framework of this research, language can also be seen as a potential whole (wave function) that is actualized through individual agency by speech. Additionally, the “quantum phenomenological approach” does not allow for the existence of abstract and transcendental rationality, as rationality is only meaningful within the context of experience. This also means rejecting the claims of critical realists such as Bhaskar and Popper, who argue that mankind's understanding of reality is based on systematic error. Similarly, Habermas perspective is also rejected due to his insistence on general and universal criteria for understanding reality. While human beings do not make a systematic error in recognizing reality, his (her) perception of reality is still relative and dependent on time and place.