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.
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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.
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