Saturday 16 December 2023

The Claim That Quantum Mechanics Has No Credible Ontology Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 860):
My own bewilderment would arise primarily from a conviction that present-day quantum mechanics has no credible ontology, so that it must be seriously modified in order for the physics of the world to make sense.


Blogger Comments:

To be clear, ontology follows from epistemology. The reason for bewilderment is the fact that quantum theory successfully invalidates the 'transcendence' epistemology assumed by physicists, namely: that there are meanings outside semiotic systems that physicists will eventually discover in a final theory of everything. Quantum Theory supports the opposite view, the 'immanence' epistemology, whereby all meaning is within semiotic systems, and so supports the view that 'reality' is the meaning that is construed of experience which, in the case of experiments, happens when an observation is made.

And from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, Quantum Theory makes the important — but insufficiently understood — distinction between potential construals of experience as meaning and actual construals of experience as meaning that instantiate that potential.

In short it is not the ontology of Quantum mechanics that must be seriously modified, but the epistemology that the physics community inherited from Galileo, and continues to assume without question, despite its disconfirmation.

No comments:

Post a Comment