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.