An Infinite Regress Of Collapsing Wave Functions Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 218-9):

As far as the world outside the box is concerned, however, we can regard the whole laboratory as just a bigger box. If the experimenter has looked inside the box and determined the fate of the cat, a colleague working in the lab next door may not know this. Does the quantum wave of the whole lab collapse only when the colleague opens the door and asks how the cat is getting on? This clearly leads us into an infinite regress. Each quantum system can be collapsed into a definite state on being measured by another system outside itself, but then the larger system goes into an indeterminate state and must be collapsed into reality by yet another system outside of it, and so on.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, there is no infinite regress here. Just as the perception of the cat is meaning construed by the experimenter on opening the box, the perception of experimenter's lab is meaning construed by the colleague on opening its door. And so on.