The 'Schrödinger's Cat' Paradox Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [7]

Gribbin (1990: 207):

The chain is endless.  Imagine that we have announced the ["Schrödinger's Human"] experiment in advance to an intrigued world, but to avoid press interference it has been performed behind locked doors.  Even after we have opened the box and either greeted our friend or dragged the corpse out, the reporters outside don't know what's going on.  To them, the whole building in which our laboratory is based is in a superposition of states.  And so on, back out in an infinite regression.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is no infinite regression here, and 'the whole building is not in a superposition of states.  A superposition of states is the potential meaning that can be made in realising a construed situation.  The reason the reporters outside 'don't know what's going on' inside the room is that instances of that potential meaning cannot be construed by them.