The Many-Worlds Standpoint On Schrödinger's Cat Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 806-7):

What about the many-worlds standpoint (b), then? Here the ‘reality’ of the quantum superposition of a dead and a live cat is simply accepted (as would the quantum-superposed weather patterns of the previous paragraph); but this does not tell us what an observer, looking at the cat (or the weather), actually ‘perceives’. The state of the observer’s perception is considered to be entangled with the state of the cat. The perception state ‘I perceive a live cat’ accompanies the ‘live-cat’ state and the perception state ‘I perceive a dead cat’ accompanies the ‘dead-cat’ state. … It is then assumed that a perceiving being always finds his/her perception state to be in one of these two; accordingly, the cat is, in the perceived world, either alive or dead. These two possibilities coexist in ‘reality’ in the entangled superposition …

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the quantum-superposition of a dead cat and a live cat is the superposition of potential construals of experience as meaning, and so the 'many worlds' interpretation mistakes potential construals for actual construals. What an observer looking at the cat actually perceives is an instance of potential: either a dead cat or a live cat.

The state of the observer's perception is entangled with the state of the cat in the sense that the state of the cat is a construal of experience as meaning by the observer. Importantly, the assumption that the meaning 'the state of the cat' transcends the meaning of semiotic systems is precisely what this experiment, and Quantum Theory generally, invalidates.

'Wigner Reality' Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 806):

It seems to me, however, that any theory that demands the presence of a conscious observer, in order that R be effected, leads to a very lop-sided (and, I would argue, highly implausible) picture of the universe. Imagine some distant Earth-like planet without conscious life, and for which there is no consciousness for many many light years in all directions. What is the weather like on that planet? 

Weather patterns have the property that they are ‘chaotic systems’, in the sense that any particular pattern which develops will depend critically on the tiniest details of what happened before. Indeed, it is probable that, in a month, say, tiny quantum effects will become so magnified that the entire pattern of weather on the planet would depend upon them. 

The absence of consciousness, according to the particular version of (f) (or perhaps (a)) under discussion, would imply that R never occurs on such a planet, so that the weather is, in reality, just some quantum superposed mess that does not resemble an actual weather in the sense that we know it. 

Yet if a spacecraft containing conscious travellers, or a probe with the capacity to transmit a signal to a conscious being, is able to train its sensors on that planet, then immediately — and only at that point — its weather suddenly becomes an ordinary weather, just as though it had been ordinary weather all the time! There is no actual contradiction with experience here, but is this ‘Wigner reality’ a believable picture for the behaviour of an actual physical universe? It is not, to me; but I can (just about) understand others giving it more credence.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the observation of weather is the construal of experience as meaning. If the weather on some distant Earth-like planet is not observed, then there is no construal of experience as meaning. If the weather on some distant Earth-like planet is observed, as by conscious travellers on a spacecraft or through the use of a sensor beam, then there is a construal of experience as meaning. Any superposition of weather patterns is a superposition of potential observations: of potential construals of experience as meaning.

Another Variant Of The Copenhagen Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 805-6):

Another variant of (a) would demand, in effect, that the ‘classical measuring apparatus’ is ultimately the observer’s consciousness. Accordingly (if we discount the consciousness of the cat itself), it is only when a conscious experimenter examines the cat that classicality has been achieved. It seems to me that, once we have arrived at this level, we are driven to take a position that is more in line with (b) or with (f). If we take the view that the U rules of quantum linear superposition continue to hold right up to the level of a conscious being, then we are in the realm of the many-worlds perspective (b), but if we take the stand that U fails for conscious beings, then we are driven to a version of (f) according to which some new type of behaviour, outside the ordinary predictions of quantum mechanics, comes into play with beings who possess consciousness. A suggestion along this line was actually put forward by the distinguished quantum physicist Eugene Wigner in 1961.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the 'classical measuring apparatus' is meaning that is the content of the observer's consciousness (and of any other linguate being who imagines or speaks or writes of it). The 'classical measuring apparatus', as such, is not the content of the cat's consciousness, because the cat cannot construe experience as linguistic meaning — though the cat can construe experience as perceptual meaning, and it is this construal that is the content of its consciousness.

The laws of quantum linear superposition continue to hold right up to when a conscious experimenter examines the cat because it is only then that the potential that the wavefunction probabilistically quantifies is construed as an actual instance of meaning. As previously argued, this does not entail a many worlds interpretation.

The Copenhagen Viewpoint On Schrödinger's Cat Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 805):

Consider the Copenhagen viewpoint (a). As far as I can make out, this interpretation would simply regard the photon detector to be a ‘classical measuring device’, to which the rules of quantum superposition are not applied. The photon state between its emission and its detection (or non-detection) by the device is described by a wavefunction (state-vector), but no ‘physical reality’ is assigned to that. The wavefunction is used merely as a mathematical expression to be used for calculating probabilities. If the beam splitter is such that the photon amplitude is divided equally into two, then the calculation tells us that there is a 50% chance for the detector to register reception of the photon and a 50% chance that it will not. Therefore there is a 50% chance that the cat will be killed and a 50% chance that it will remain alive. 

This is physically the correct answer, where ‘physically’ refers to the behaviour of the world that we actually experience. Yet this description provides us with a very unsatisfactory picture of things if we wish to pursue the physical events in greater detail. What actually goes on inside a detector? Why are we allowed to treat it as a ‘classical device’ when, after all, it is constructed from the same quantum ingredients (protons, electrons, neutrons, virtual photons, etc.) as any other piece of physical material, large or small? I can well appreciate that, in the early days of quantum mechanics, something of the nature of Niels Bohr’s perspective on the subject was almost a necessity, so that the theory could actually be used, and progress in quantum physics could be made. Yet, as far as I can see, such a perspective can only be a temporary one, and it does not resolve the question of why, and at what stage, ‘classical behaviour’ might arise for large and complicated structures like ‘detectors’. Since viewpoint (a) requires such ‘classical structures’ for its interpretation of quantum mechanics, it can only be a ‘stop-gap’ position, in which the deeper issues concerning what actually constitutes a measurement are not addressed at all.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the rules of quantum superposition do not apply to the (observed) photon detector because quantum superposition applies only to potential meaning.

The photon state when it is not observed, as described by the wavefunction, is potential 'physical reality', and probability is the quantification of that potential meaning.

What goes on inside the detector, like the detector itself, is potential meaning until it is observed, and thereby construed as an instance of meaning.

The problems of quantum physics are solved by taking an immanence view of meaning and by distinguishing potential meaning from instances of that potential.

Schrödinger’s Cat As Both Dead And Alive Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 804-5):

We suppose that there is a photon source S which emits a single photon in the direction of a beam splitter (‘half-silvered’ mirror), at which point the photon’s state is split into two parts. In one of the two emerging beams, the photon encounters a detector that is coupled to some murderous device for killing the poor cat, while in the other, the photon escapes, and the cat remains alive. See Fig. 29.7. …

Since these two alternatives for the photon must co-exist in quantum linear superposition, and since the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation demands that the two subsequent time-evolutions must persist in constant complex-number-weighted superposition, as time passes, the quantum state must ultimately involve such a complex-number superposition of a dead cat and a live cat: so the cat is both dead and alive at the same time!

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the superposition of states is potential only. The cat is either alive or dead, depending on which photon state is instantiated. The absurd notion of the cat being both dead and alive at the same time simply arises from confusing potential with actual.

'Quantum Fluctuations In The Gravitational Field' Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 803):

Sometimes the idea of ‘quantum fluctuations in the gravitational field’ might be appealed to, according to which the very structure of spacetime would become ‘foamlike’, rather than resembling a smooth manifold (Fig. 29.6) at the ‘Planck scale’ of some 10⁻³⁵m.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the notion of 'quantum fluctuations in the gravitational field' confuses the instantiation of quantum potential (fluctuations) with the spatiotemporal dimensions of the instances. That is, it confuses mediated processes with their circumstances.

The ‘Bohmian’ Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 789):

In the ‘Bohmian’ (pilot wave) case, the ontological position is, refreshingly, much more down to Earth, although even here there are some considerable subtleties — for there are, in a sense, two levels of reality, one of which is firmer than the other. It is simplest to put the case first for a system consisting of just a single spinless particle. Then this firmer level of reality is given by the particle’s actual position. In a two-slit experiment, since the particle’s location is ontologically real, it actually goes through one slit or it goes through the other, but its motion is ‘guided’, in effect, by ψ, so this provides a secondary, but nevertheless ontologically still ‘real’ status to the ψ also. … the picture is a very non-local one, where ψ is a highly ‘holistic’ entity (as it must be, in order to accord with the holistic nature of wavefunctions … ).

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the two levels of reality in the 'Bohmian' interpretation correspond to potential (meaning) and actual (meaning), with the secondary reality of the holistic 'guiding' wavefunction corresponding to probabilistic potential of the quantum system, as a whole, and the 'firmer' level of reality corresponding to actual instances of potential, such as a particle actually passing through one slit or the other.

The 'Environmental Decoherence' Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 785, 802):

… I should mention a further possibility for interpreting conventional quantum mechanics. This, as far as I can make out, is the most prevalent of the quantum-mechanical standpoints — that of environmental decoherence (c) — although it is perhaps more of a pragmatic than an ontological stance. 

The idea of (c) is that in any measurement process, the quantum system under consideration cannot be taken in isolation from its surroundings. Thus, when a measurement is performed, each different outcome does not constitute a quantum state on its own, but must be considered as part of an entangled state, where each alternative outcome is entangled with a different state of the environment. Now, the environment will consist of a great many particles, effectively in random motion, and the complete details of their locations and motions must be taken to be totally unobservable in practice. …

Holders of viewpoint (c) tend to regard themselves as ‘positivists’ who have no truck with ‘wishy-washy’ issues of ontology in any case, claiming to believe that they have no concern with what is ‘real’ and what is ‘not real’. As Stephen Hawking has said: 

I don’t demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don’t know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus paper. All I’m concerned with is that the theory should predict the results of measurements.

My own position, on the other hand, is that the issue of ontology is crucial to quantum mechanics, though it raises some matters that are far from being resolved at the present time.

… the environmental-decoherence viewpoint (c) … maintains that state reduction R [the collapse of the wave function] can be understood as coming about because the quantum system under consideration becomes inextricably entangled with its environment.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the 'Environmental Decoherence' interpretation of Quantum Theory misconstrues the interdependence of potential as an entanglement of instances (states of the environment).

The Collapse Of The Wave Function As ‘All In The Mind’ Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 784):

Despite their diametrically opposing natures, the viewpoints (a) and (b) have some significant points in common, with regard to how |ψ⟩ [the wave function] is taken to relate to our observed ‘reality’ — by which I mean to the seemingly real world that, on a macroscopic scale, we all experience. In this observed world, only one result of an experiment is taken to occur, and we may justly regard it as the job of physics to explain or to model the thing that we indeed normally refer to as ‘reality’. 

Neither according to (a) nor according to (b) is the state vector |ψ⟩ taken to describe that reality. And in each case, we must bring in the perceptions of some human experimenter to make sense of how the formalism relates to this observed real world. 

In case (a) it is the state vector |ψ⟩ itself that is taken to be an artefact of that human experimenter’s perceptions, whereas in case (b), it is ‘ordinary reality’ that is somehow delineated in terms of the perceptions of the experimenter, the state vector |ψ⟩ now representing some kind of deeper overriding reality (the omnium) that is not directly perceived. 

In both cases the ‘jumping’ of R [the collapse of the wave function] is taken to be not physically real, being, in a sense, ‘all in the mind’!

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the wave function specifies potential 'observed reality', where 'reality' is the meaning construed of experience in the process of making an observation. The one result of an experiment is the one observation that instantiates one of the potential meanings as actual.

The Copenhagen Interpretation (a) acknowledges that the wave function involves the meaning of an observer, and in the Many Worlds Interpretation (b), the potential construed by the wave function is misunderstood as actual: as a 'deeper, overriding reality'.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the collapse of wave function is physically real, because physical reality is meaning construed of experience, as through mental processes of perception and cognition. The mind is the process of construing experience as meaning.

Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 784):

Why, according to (b), is the omnium not perceived as actual ‘reality’ by an experimenter? The idea is that the experimenter’s states of mind also coexist in the quantum superposition, these different individual mind states being entangled with the different possible results of the measurement being performed. 

The view is that, accordingly, there is effectively a ‘different world’ for each different possible result of the measurement, there being a separate ‘copy’ of the experimenter in each of these different worlds, all these worlds co-existing in quantum superposition. Each copy of the experimenter experiences a different outcome for the experiment, but since these ‘copies’ inhabit different worlds, there is no communication between them, and each thinks that only one result has occurred. 

Proponents of (b) often maintain that it is the requirement that an experimenter have a consistent ‘awareness state’ that forces the impression that there is just ‘one world’ in which R [the collapse of the wave function] appears to take place. Such a viewpoint was first explicitly put forward by Hugh Everett III in 1957 (although I suspect that many others had, not always with conviction, privately entertained this kind of view earlier — as I had myself in the mid-1950s — without daring to be open about it!).

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the experimenter's states of mind are meanings, and the quantum superposition of mind states is the superposition of meanings that constitute the potential of the quantum system. In this formulation, potential construals of experience as meaning are mistaken for actual construals of experience as meaning.

The Multiverse Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 783-4):

The supporters of alternative (b), on the other hand, do take |ψ⟩ [the wave function] to represent reality, but they deny that R [the collapse of the wave function] happens at all. They would argue that when a measurement takes place, all the alternative outcomes actually coexist in reality, in a grand quantum linear superposition of alternative universes. This grand superposition is described by a wavefunction |ψ⟩ for the entire universe. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘multiverse’, but I believe that a more appropriate term is the omnium. For although this viewpoint is commonly colloquially expressed as a belief in the parallel co-existence of different alternative worlds, this is misleading. The alternative worlds do not really ‘exist’ separately, in this view; only the vast particular superposition expressed by |ψ⟩ is taken as real.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the wave function construes potential, and its superpositions are the superposition of potential, not actual. It is only with the collapse of the wavefunction, when an observation is made, that the actual is instantiated. Supporters of the multiverse interpretation mistake potential universes for the actual universe that we experience as meaning.

The Copenhagen Interpretation Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 783):

The viewpoint (a) is basically the ontology of the Copenhagen interpretation as expressed specifically by Niels Bohr, who regarded |ψ⟩ [i.e. the wave function] as not representing a quantum-level reality, but as something to be taken as merely describing the experimenter’s ‘knowledge’ of a quantum system.  

The ‘jumping’, according to R, [i.e. the collapse of the wave function] would then be understood as the experimenter’s simply acquiring more knowledge about the system, so it is the knowledge that jumps, not the physics of the system. 

According to (a), one should not ask that any ‘reality’ be assigned to quantum-level phenomena, the only acknowledged reality being that of the classical world within which the experimenter’s apparatus finds its home. 

As a variant of (a), one might take the view that this ‘classical world’ comes in not at the level of some piece of ‘macroscopic machinery’ that constitutes the observer’s measuring apparatus, but at the level of the observer’s own consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the Copenhagen interpretation takes an 'immanent' view of meaning, where meaning is a property of semiotic systems, rather than a 'transcendent' view of meaning, where meaning exists beyond semiotic systems. This is borne out by the distinction between 'knowledge' of the experimenter (immanent) and the physics of the system (transcendent).

However, the collapse of the wave function is not a matter of acquiring more knowledge (meaning), but a matter of construing the actual meaning (particle) that instantiates the potential meaning (wave). The contrast between 'quantum level phenomena' and the 'classical world' is the contrast between potential and actual 'reality' (meaning), both of which constitute the content of consciousness.

Quantum Physicists’ Ontologies Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 782):

It is a common view among many of today’s physicists that quantum mechanics provides us with no picture of ‘reality’ at all! The formalism of quantum mechanics, on this view, is to be taken as just that: a mathematical formalism. This formalism, as many quantum physicists would argue, tells us essentially nothing about an actual quantum reality of the world, but merely allows us to compute probabilities for alternative realities that might occur. Such quantum physicists’ ontology — to the extent that they would be worried by matters of ‘ontology’ at all — would be the view (a): that there is simply no reality expressed in the quantum formalism. 

At the other extreme, there are many quantum physicists who take the (seemingly) diametrically opposite view (b): that the unitarily evolving quantum state completely describes actual reality, with the alarming implication that practically all quantum alternatives must always continue to coexist (in superposition).

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, 'reality' is meaning construed of experience, whether as the first-order phenomenal meanings of the material domain, or their reconstrual as the second-order metaphenomenal meanings that realise theories.

The 'reality' that is expressed in the quantum formalism is that actual reality is a probabilistic instantiation of potential reality ("alternative realities"). Quantum alternatives only co-exist in superposition as potential, not as actual.

A Quantum Superposition Of Spacetimes Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 770):

In the Hartle–Hawking scheme, it is necessary to use Hawking’s ingenious modification of the Wick idea, in which the ‘rotation’ is applied not to a space which is a background to the paths, in a path integral — which is the usual idea — but to the individual spacetimes which themselves constitute each path of the path integral. …

Hartle and Hawking’s striking proposal was that this path-integral approach of Hawking’s could describe the relevant quantum theory for the Big Bang itself, and that in place of an actual singular spacetime there would be a quantum superposition (i.e. ‘path integral’) of ‘spacetimes’…

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, paths are trajectories though spacetime, whereas spacetime constitutes the dimensions in which such trajectories are measured. On this basis, an individual path is not an individual spacetime.

From this perspective, each path of a path integral is a potential path of a particle through spacetime. On this basis, there is no superposition of spacetimes in Hartle and Hawking’s proposal, only a superposition of potential trajectories through spacetime.

Naked Singularities Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 767-8):

This observation should be taken in conjunction with another conjectured feature of spacetime singularities, referred to as cosmic censorship. This is a (currently unproved) assertion that, roughly speaking, in unstoppable gravitational collapse, a black hole will be the result, rather than something worse, known as a naked singularity. A naked singularity would be a spacetime singularity, resulting from a gravitational collapse, which is visible to outside observers, so it is not ‘clothed’ by an event horizon. There are various slightly different technical ways of specifying what is meant by the term ‘naked singularity’, and I do not propose to enter into the distinctions here. Sufficient for our purposes would be to say that a naked singularity is ‘timelike’, in the sense that signals can both enter and leave the singularity. Cosmic censorship would forbid such things (except possibly in certain highly contrived or ‘special’ situations that would not occur in a realistic gravitational collapse).

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, according to General Relativity, a singularity is a point with no spatial dimensions, since space intervals have contracted to zero. Importantly, a singularity is not a point in space, but space reduced to a point.

Since a singularity has no spatial dimensions, there is no space that a signal can enter or leave. Moreover, the notion of a naked singularity rests on the possibility that the singularity itself can be its own event horizon.