The Mind Collapsing The Wave Function Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 219):

Various resolutions have been proposed to break out of this deadlock. According to one highly speculative point of view, it is necessary to invoke the concept of mind at some stage, and to argue that the chain of regress ends when the result of the measurement enters somebody's consciousness. This endows the world with an extremely subjective element, for it obliges us to suppose that, in the absence of observation, the external world does not exist in a well-defined sense. It is as though through our observations we actually create, rather than explore, the external world.

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, this "highly speculative" point of view is entirely valid. However, it is not that 'in the absence of observation, the external world does not exist in a well-defined sense', but that the absence of observation is the absence of construing experience as an existing external world. But all such construals are intersubjective, not subjective, because the meanings that are construed are those of a socially exchanged semiotic system (language).