Perspectives On The Very Early Universe Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 863, 868n):

We should bear in mind that we are here concerned with the very early universe, where the temperature would have been perhaps some 10³²K. There were no experimenters around at that time performing ‘measurements’, so it is hard to see how the standard ‘Copenhagen’ perspective can be applied. 

What about the many-worlds view? In that picture, there is no actual R, and the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker-symmetric state of the universe would be maintained until the present day, this state being representable as a grand superposition of many constituent spacetime geometries. Only when conscious observers try to make sense of the world, according to this view, would the resolution into alternative spacetime geometries be deemed appropriate — there now being a superposition of conscious observers, each one perceiving a single ‘world’.⁴⁶

On the ‘For All Practical Purposes’ view, the presence of (sufficient) environmental decoherence is regarded as the signal, whereby our quantum superposition of different geometries is permitted to be regarded as a probability mixture of different geometries.

⁴⁶ On Wheeler’s own variant, the ‘participatory universe’, see Wheeler (1983), it would be the ultimate presence of conscious observers who somehow (teleologically) determine the particular selection of spacetime geometry that occurred in the early universe.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the Copenhagen interpretation is concerned with the construal of experience as first-order meaning, through perception, whereas (a model of) the very early universe is a reconstrual of first-order meaning as second-order meaning that realises theory, through cognition.

From the same perspective, the notion of 'a grand superposition of many constituent spacetime geometries' confuses potential construals of experience as meaning (superpositions) with instances of that potential (actual construals), and confuses spacetime with states of phenomena in spacetime. The notion of 'a superposition of conscious observers' misapplies the notion of alternative potential construals of meaning to the observer who construes experience as meaning. 

In this view, it is not that conscious observers '(teleologically) determine the particular selection of spacetime geometry that occurred in the early universe' but that this is second-order meaning construed by conscious processing.