Wednesday 8 November 2023

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.

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