The 'Convenience' View Of R Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 532):

According to such a ‘convenience’ view of R, one imagines that R would emerge as some kind of approximation to a ‘true’ underlying U evolution. But this viewpoint leads to serious paradoxes. 

For example, let us recall the thought experiment where my two colleagues in space had individual detectors, and try to imagine that the response of each detector is simply the result of a Schrödinger evolution starting from its interaction with the wave-packet part that it receives. The quantum state before detection is actually a sum of the two individual wave-packet parts, one reaching one detector and the other part reaching the other detector; therefore, by linearity, the subsequent Schrödinger evolved response of each detector must coexist in superposition with a response in the other. The Schrödinger evolution leads to one detector response plus the other detector response (‘plus’ in the sense of quantum superposition of the two detector responses), not one detector response or the other detector response (the ‘or’ being what actually always happens in practice). It seems to me untenable to maintain that U tells the whole story (and the ‘conventional’ quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr’s ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ certainly does not try to do this; for it treats the detectors themselves as ‘classical entities’). 

As far as I can see, the only way to insist that U holds for all processes, including measurement, would be to pass to a ‘many-worlds’ type of view in which the two detector responses do actually coexist, but in what are referred to as ‘different worlds’. But even then, U cannot be ‘the whole story’, because we would need a theory to explain that aspect of our conscious perceptions which allows only individual detector responses to be consciously perceived, whereas superpositions of responses with non-responses are never consciously perceived! … I should register, at this point, that I do not myself believe that ‘many worlds’ is the right way to go; I am merely arguing that it seems to be where one is led if one insists on ‘U at all levels’.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the 'underlying U evolution' is quantum potential and the 'approximation' R is an instance of that potential, and this viewpoint does not lead to paradoxes.

In this view, the wave-packet is potential, not actual, so it does not actually travel, in the recalled thought experiment, and it is quantum potential that 'coexists in superposition, not actual instances of that potential. It is only when a detector screen is observed that the quantum potential "collapses" to an actual instance of construed meaning. 

Moreover, this view is consistent with the Copenhagen Interpretation, whereas the 'many-worlds' interpretation miscontrues superpositions of potential as superpositions of actual instances.