No.19687
Quantum physics accounts for the collapse of the wave function (and thus for the emergence of “ordinary” reality) in terms of the act of perception/registration (a single reality emerges through the act of measurement), but it then explains (or, rather, describes) this measurement in terms of the ordinary reality that only emerges through it (the measuring machine is hit by electrons, etc.), and this obviously involves a vicious circle.
What this means is that the big problem is not how we can pass from the classic universe to the universe of quantum waves, but exactly the opposite one—why and how the quantum universe itself immanently requires the collapse of the wave function, its “de-coherence” into the classic universe, i.e., why and how the collapse is inherent to the quantum universe. Instead of just standing in awe before the wonder of the quantum universe, we should turn around our perspective and perceive as the true wonder the rise of our “ordinary” spatio-temporal reality. It is not only that there is no classic reality which is not sustained by blurred quantum fluctuations; one should add that there is no quantum universe which is not always-already hooked onto a piece of classic reality. The problem of the collapse of the wave function through the act of measurement is that it has to be formulated in classic, not quantum, terms—this is why “the collapse of the wave function occupies an anomalous position within quantum mechanics. It is required by the fact that observations occur, but it is not predicted by quantum theory. It is an additional postulate, which must be made in order that quantum mechanics be consistent.” One should note this precise formulation: a measurement formulated in terms of classic reality is necessary for quantum mechanics itself to be consistent, it is an addition of the classic reality which “sutures” the quantum field. What, then, is the status of “quantum reality,” i.e., of the so-called wave function Fi which renders the panoply of superimposed states?
>Are we to regard Fi as actually representing physical reality? Or is it to be viewed as being merely a calculational tool for working out probabilities of the results of experiments that might be performed, the results of these being “real,” but not the wave function itself? … It was part of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics to take this latter viewpoint, and, according to various other schools of thought also, Fi is to be regarded as a calculational convenience with no ontological status other than to be part of the state of mind of the experimenter or theoretician. (198)
This reluctance to concede any ontological status to Fi “stems from the abhorrence felt by so many physicists that the state of the actual world could suddenly ‘jump’ from time to time in the seemingly random way that is characteristic of the rules of quantum measurement”: in the act of measurement, the wave function “collapses,” it is reduced to just one reality, so how can such an act affect objective reality, erasing the multiplicity if superimposed states? (“In quantum mechanics when we interact with a system, we don’t only learn something, we also ‘cancel’ a part of the relevant information about the system” [217]—this reduction is unthinkable in our standard reality.) The most radical opposite version is that of the MWI (many-worlds interpretation) which admits no such reduction: all possibilities contained in a wave function are actualized. However, as we have already seen, the true opposite of the Copenhagen orthodoxy is not MWI but the interpretation which, on the contrary, reads the wave function (the quantum spacetime) as the ultimate reality, and conceives our spatio-temporal reality as a kind of ontological illusion, as a product of our ignorance and cognitive limitation. So which version is the right one, or at least better? To paraphrase Stalin, they are both worse, their very alternative is wrong—on should insist on the ultimate undecidability of this choice, none of the two levels should be elevated into the true reality.
This undecidability doesn’t imply a symmetry of the two levels. As materialists, we should posit that there is nothing but quantum waves which form the “basic grammar” of reality, no other reality, but this nothing is in itself a positive fact, which means that there must be some kind of a gap or cut in this “basic grammar, a gap or cut which opens up the space for the collapse of the wave function. This brings us back to the model of the Klein bottle: insofar as its rounded surface stands for the Real, i.e., the “mollusk” of the basic texture of quantum waves, and insofar as this texture is pre-ontological, a “less than nothing,” the hole in its midst indicates that something, a kind of abyssal attractor, drags down the field, pushing “less than nothing” to Nothing, to the Void against the background of which something (our reality) may emerge. So we don’t just have the duality of “infranstructural” quantum waves and of “superstructural” macroscopic reality: there is a third level, the abyssal Void through which pre-ontological Real is transubstantiated into macroscopic reality; through this transubstantiation, all higher-level entities emerge, inclusive of the agents of observation/measurement of quantum waves, but also what we experience as the empty (spatial and temporal) form of macroscopic reality.
Kant was right here: time and space are forms, not just the statistic average of spacetime oscillations, and the enigma here is: How does this form detach itself from content and impose itself on all content as form? The answer is that the abyssal Void provides the distance from which form can appear as the external container of its content. At the most abstract level, the snout-like twist of the Klein bottle (rendered possible by the abyssal Void that renders the “mollusk” of quantum waves unstable, incomplete) accounts for the rise of “objective” spatio-temporal reality out of this “mollusk.” It is thus not that the “mollusk,” the texture of quantum waves, happily vibrates and is just here and there accidentally punctured by an abyssal cut which gives birth to a snout: in the unorientable closed circularity of the Klein bottle, the snout itself retroactively gives birth to the mollusk of the Real.
This snout is grounded in another surprising (for our everyday common-sense ontology) feature of the quantum universe: its three key features—actuality of the possible, “knowledge in the real,” the delay of (symbolic) registration, i.e., retroactivity—occur also in our symbolic order; how should we read this weird fact? It is simply that we should reject the straight evolutionary model of how higher levels of reality emerge out of lower levels (life out of inanimate matter, mind out of life) in which the basic level is that of inanimate matter with no absentials and just direct mechanic causality, and where out of this basic level then absentials gradually play a greater and greater role. (“Absential” refers to the paradoxical intrinsic property of an entity that can exist only with respect to something missing, separate, or even non-existent. While this property is irrelevant in terms of inanimate things, it is a crucial property of life and mind.) Lack and absences must be here from the very beginning, already at the zero level, which means that physical external determinist reality cannot be the zero level.
How to break this deadlock without regressing into spiritualism? Quantum physics here provides an answer: it is the gap between material reality and quantum proto-reality which makes possible the gradual self-overcoming of material reality. We thus have to posit a kind of ontological triad of quantum proto-reality (the pre-ontological quantum oscillations), ordinary physical reality, and the “immaterial” virtual level of Sense-Events (language) in which the pre-ontological real returns.