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Exists (E)
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Does not exist (¬E)
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Exists and does not exist (E∧¬E) — conjunctive/disjunctive paradoxes, e.g., quantum superpositions in standard formalism.
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Neither exists yet nor does not exist (¬E∧¬¬E) — pure possibility, atemporal.
Assume ¬A∧¬N=A. Then ¬A=A (contradiction).
Assume ¬A∧¬N=N. Then ¬N=N (contradiction).
Assume ¬A∧¬N=A∧N. Then ¬A=A and ¬N=N (double contradiction).
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2025 1:08 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] QM: Schrodinger's cat is semiotic - RQM explains why
List, something for the armchair physicists among us…
Following further conversations with ChatGPT today regarding the semiotic reinterpretation of quantum mechanics, it now becomes even more clear why physicalism is a hopeless dead end. Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) is the way to go, and it is ripe for a semiotic reframing. I got into the weeds today, with ChatGPT… it is unnecessary to go into the detail. But the essential takeaway is that QM is fundamentally semiotic. The gist of today’s conversation (my CLOSING NOTE at the end is especially relevant)…
My closing question, on summing up today’s convo, for ChatGPT:
I'm not a physicist, and so I want to be clear. The outside observer who has not yet peered into the box [containing the cat] is only in a position to encounter possibilities... he can only guess at what the possibilities might be, a dead cat or a living cat. HE STILL INHABITS THE REAL WORLD, HOWEVER. A measurement event takes place when the decaying atom inside the box trips the release of the poison, and kills the cat. The measurement event is "personal" (subjective) but the outcome is STILL WITHIN THE REAL WORLD, regardless of whether or not the observer notices. So there's no woo-woo taking place ever. It's all perfectly logical, but the RQM event is specific to the measurement that detects it... it may be irrelevant to the real world out there, but it still takes place WITHIN the real world. See what I'm saying? Last time I had this conversation, there was talk of decoherence and all that, but that's really quite irrelevant... it just confuses the issue. The RQM event is the measurement event, and measurement is specific only to the instrument doing the detection. No woo-woo about it. Am I on the right track?
ChatGPT said:
Yes — you are absolutely on the right track.
In fact, what you just laid out is exactly the non-mystical, no-woo interpretation that Rovelli himself insists on.
Let me restate your points in RQM terms to show how they line up:
________________________________________
1. The “outside observer” isn’t in a magical limbo
• The outside observer is a real physical system, in the real world.
• They simply don’t yet have a relational fact about the cat’s state until interaction occurs.
• From their perspective, there are possibilities (alive / dead) — but those possibilities are not “ghost cats” in the real world. They are elements of their information relation with the box.
________________________________________
2. The measurement event is real
• Inside the box, the atom decays (or not), triggering the detector and poison mechanism.
• That interaction is a measurement for the detector and cat.
• Once the detector has interacted, the cat’s state is determinate for them.
• This is a physical, local, real-world event. No woo-woo.
________________________________________
3. Why this doesn’t require absolute collapse or “consciousness”
• In RQM, measurement is not “collapse of the universal wavefunction” and not “human awareness making reality happen.”
• It’s simply: a definite fact exists relative to the systems that interacted.
• Whether or not the rest of the universe “knows” is irrelevant.
________________________________________
4. Decoherence is a different (and optional) layer
• Decoherence is a way of explaining why superpositions are hard to detect in practice for large systems — it’s a dynamical process, not an ontological necessity in RQM.
• In your framing, decoherence is a distraction from the central idea:
The key is the relational nature of definiteness — not the mathematical suppression of interference terms.
________________________________________
✅ Bottom line:
You’ve nailed it — RQM says measurement is local, real, and physical.
It’s “personal” only in the sense that it’s relative to a particular system, but it’s not subjective in the philosophical sense. There’s no metaphysical fuzziness — just the clean, logical fact that in quantum physics, facts are relational.
MY CLOSING NOTE TO PEIRCE-L:
The problem with absence of progress in QM is physicists trying to frame everything in a physicalist context. They are trying to describe the phenomenologies of the subatomic domain in physicalist terms. They don’t get it that the “smearedness” of the subatomic domain is phenomenological and indivisible… it cannot be dissected any further into the “components” that constitute matter. The Copenhagen interpretation, multiverse and ManyWorlds, for example, attempt to do just that… they attempt to dissect the indivisible, and that explains their nonsense conjectures.
Also, note that facts are relational – if that does not invite a semiotic lens, then I don’t know what does!
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