'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.