I’ve been thinking about the infinite regress problem in observational accounts of quantum theory. Treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy of observers.
What I’m still reflecting on is whether this regress is best avoided by reinterpreting observation as fundamentally passive, or whether the decisive move lies deeper—at the level of relational structure itself, where stability and coherence arise prior to any observer being singled out.
If so, the absence of regress may not come from where we stop the chain, but from the fact that no chain is required in the first place.
Who is observing the observer…?
If we are allowed to discuss Vedanta, which is most popularly described with the Advaita conclusion, then we are left with a possibility that nothing truly ‘exists’, except as a projection—even the projection of the body through which two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two halves of the tongue, and two hands do all the heavy lifting…as a projection of the ‘sense organs’, which have as their product the ‘objects of the senses’ (not the reverse). The senses, as subtle instruments of perception, project their results, rather than recieve them and interpret them.
What we have as forms, or knowledge, lies beyond the projection, and can become enmeshed, as a rope being mistaken as a snake, causing one to recoil at its sight.
But if one can have an incorrect inference, then how does this ‘projection’ occur? Did we accidentally projection a rope when we meant to projection a snake? Obviously not. Thus it is the very possibility of false perception that exposes the possibility of an underlying reality, though it is not ‘in the world’, it is before the world is perceived as a reflection.
The world is a projection of what we reflect. Our knowledge is not important, but our act of projecting is necessary. What is ‘out there’ actually is somewhere else. The organs of the senses are producing the projection based on a reflection of what is actually occurring somewhere else, which is why material occurrences require ‘observation’, which is projection. Though what the mind-parts are actually doing is receiving and reflecting that onto a canvas of material particles, which require our participation, but which don’t on their own constitute Reality. Reality is somewhere else.
Just as with Plato’s cave, we watch images on a wall which are shadows of their true being. Why don’t we perceive directly what we are reflecting and projecting? This is called ignorance, or false identification. We identify with the projection, because we believe we are the sense-mind, endowed with ego (sense of separate existence), whereas the whole show is operating as a single entity which is all entities and happenings all at once, without division.
When one lets-go of their individual identity, it becomes easier to understand. You have a true identity as a form beyond the material projection, but you identify with the projection, which is only one small aspect of the entire flow. Wave vs. Ocean argument. The projection is just inside the mind. One remains trapped inside their mind.
I would frame it slightly differently. Reality is not “somewhere else” behind or beyond the world as a projection.
What is fundamental is not elsewhere — it is prior. Not spatially prior, but generatively prior.
The world is not a shadow cast from another place. It is what stabilizes when coherence forms.
So the issue is not that reality hides behind appearance, but that appearance is the first stabilized layer of what precedes it.
And a paper that deeply impressed me argues that, when we adopt this generative-priority framework, the relationship between observation, stability, and reality can be explained in a fully coherent way.
The solution lies in stopping talking about “observers” to begin with. The velocity of a moving train differs between observers as it is at rest relative to an observer riding it but in motion relative to an observer sitting next to the tracks, but there is clearly nothing special here about conscious observers nor is anything about velocity subjective in nature. If you pointed a radar gun at the train, the gun would also record different values for the velocity of the train from both perspectives, and the radar gun is clearly not a conscious observer nor is it a subject. It is a purely mechanical physical object.
We thus have to interpret velocity as not subjective or observer-dependence but as contextual in nature. The distinction here is that velocity should be interpreted as literally being physically realized to have different values in different measurement contexts. It does not differ between the two observers because they are conscious observers. There is nothing subjective about it. It is just that some physical properties of the natural reality do ontologically differ in different contexts, i.e. the difference in velocity as perceived between the two observers is a real difference.
There is no universal “true” velocity of which the relative velocities are just a subjective description of. There is only the relative velocities, and the relative velocities are ontological. They are not perceiving some illusion or veil disallowing them from seeing “true” reality. True reality really is the velocity they perceive, which really does ontologically differ between observers, not because they are observers, but because the two observers occupy different measurement contexts, and the property is context-dependent. If the two observers occupied the same context (i.e. both are aboard the train) then they would measure the same velocity.
It is thus not about observer-dependence but context-dependence. The former implies subjectivity and some special role for conscious observers, whereas the latter is more clear that properties of physical systems merely are realized differently in different contexts, that they really do ontologically differ as their values are contingent upon the context in which they are realized in relation to everything else.
Speaking of “observers” itself does lead you into an infinite regress of observers, so we should drop the language of “observers” and “observer-dependence,” but instead talk about the context under which the properties of physical systems are realized. There is no “chain” required because the introduction of “observers” in the first place is unwarranted and arises from confusing contextuality with subjectivity. We need not make any mention of the observer at all. We can simply speak about the realized properties of particles, and the context under which this realization takes place.
We should stop treating it as if the only ontological properties are non-contextual ones. There is an obsession among people to believe that if we cannot assign non-contextual values to all properties of particles, then they cannot be said to exist ontologically, i.e. there is no “objective reality.” But this is nonsense. We have known physical systems have irreducibly contextual properties since Galileo, as even long prior to quantum mechanics or general relativity, we have known things like velocity and space and time coordinates are context dependent and there is no universal coordinate system.
We thus should stop pretending like there is meaningfully a universal coordinate system, a sort of “godlike” point of view on the world. It just doesn’t exist. As Carlo Rovelli put it, we should stop pretending like there meaningfully exist a physical world “as viewed from the outside.” Such a thing is not philosophically or logically coherent, and it cannot even be made consistent with the laws of physics. Physical, ontological reality, as it really exists independent of the observer, is irreducibly dependent upon the context in which it is realized.
Even speaking of “relations” is somewhat confused because a relation between things always implies two different things, and thus we are forced to introduce the relation between the observer and what is observed, and such an interaction, as Rovelli himself admits, only makes sense if conceived of from a third-person perspective, i.e. the perspective “from the outside.” It leads into the same kind of observer-dependence and thus infinite regress if taken to be a foundational starting point.
This is my one criticism of relational quantum mechanics. To be logically consistent, it must drop talk about interactions and relations, and merely talk of context and realizations. I wrote an article on this below in The Quantastic Journal.
I would, again, implore you to read the writings of the physicist and philosopher Francois-Igor Pris (he has a dual PhD in these). He has repeatedly tried to point out that if we just stick to speaking about context and realization, then there is no issue interpreting quantum theory as a theory of the physical world independent of the observer. The conflation between subjectivism and contexutalism (observer-dependence and context-dependence) leads one into falsely thinking quantum theory is a subjectivist theory, and thus their “way out” is either to devolve into idealism, or to claim the theory is wrong because of its contextual nature.
If you drop this conflation, then quantum theory is a physical theory of reality independent of the observer like any other theory. The observer is not important. What one needs to specify is the context under which one expects the physical property of a system to be realized, such as, specifying the preparation of the experiment and the orientation of the measurement device, and then this places constraints on its realized values. The only fundamental difference between quantum theory and theories beforehand is that classical theories place complete constraints and so the value is uniquely determined by the full experimental context, whereas the full experimental context in quantum mechanics only constraints it to a probability distribution of possible realized values.
This fact has some conterinuitive implications, because whatever value is realized, this is also part of the preparation and thus context for a later measurement, and so, before the first measurement takes place, you don’t actually even fully know the context of the second measurement. You instead have to just wait until the first one is carried out to then re-orient yourself by updating your accounting of the context, i.e. by reducing the state vector based on the property of the system realized in that context, to then make a prediction as to the second measurement.
This is somewhat counterinuitive because usually the context of the first measurement should fully determine what value will be realized for the second as well, but the fundamentally random nature of quantum theory makes this not the case, and so it defies some of our basic intuition, but you can just get used to this very quickly, because nothing is logically inconsistent about it.
I’ve noticed that, while I have sent replies and shared papers in response to your comments on previous posts, those have not been addressed, and instead you continue to leave long comments on new posts.
Could you clarify why you choose to comment on new posts rather than replying to the threads where I have already responded?
I am not sending papers at random. I am sharing them because I believe they are directly relevant to the discussion.
Given that you are clearly capable of writing thoughtful and extended comments like these, I believe you are also fully capable of reading and engaging with the papers. I would genuinely welcome hearing your impressions and thoughts on them from someone with such a deep understanding of this topic.
I would therefore appreciate it if you could first respond to the content I have already sent.
You keep sending me quantum woo mysticism that I don’t care to respond to. I am a materialist. I do not believe in mysticism, and I see quantum mechanics as entirely a physical theory that describes the physical world as it exists independently of the observer. It is not mystical at all but is quite boring and mechanical.
The papers you keep sending me are from the “Subjectivity Intersection Emergence Lab,” a random unaccredited institution created by Satoru Watanabe, whose only credentials is a bachelor’s in business administration. He then publishes paper under his “lab” that are not peer reviewed and list him as the only author. One of the papers you sent me, he claimed that he found evidence that humans can consciously influence the outcomes that are fundamentally random in quantum mechanics, which if were true would directly violate the statistical rules of quantum mechanics and would surely win him a Nobel Prize! So where is his Nobel Prize? Oh yeah, it doesn’t exist, because his “research” is not peer reviewed.
These are papers from a crackpot and I don’t care to take them seriously. Another paper you linked he tries to “solve” the “hard problem of consciousness” by linking it to quantum mechanics, which the paper is so esoteric and filled with buzzwords it was probably written by ChatGPT. I do not even believe the “hard problem of consciousness” exists as it is solely a feature of indirect realist philosophy and I am a direct realist, so anyone claiming to be trying to “solve” it by combining “consciousness” with quantum phenomena is engaging in abstract metaphysical woo. There is no such thing as the “hard problem of consciousness,” and it is just bad indirect realist philosophy that deludes people into thinking it exists, and that is why every attempt to “solve” it is never taken seriously by the actual academic community because it never yields anything useful or coherent at all, because it is trying to “solve” a “problem” that is invented out of whole cloth by pure sophistry.
These are just nonsense. You have found some crackpot on the internet and are expecting me to review all their papers and they are garbage. I despise quantum woo and I was trying to be kind by ignoring it, and trying to re-articulate what I am trying to say so that you think in realist and materialist terms and stop trying to think of quantum theory in woo woo magical “consciousness” terms. I do not care to entertain that kind of stuff and don’t want to argue about it. I have replied to multiples of your own threads because you keep making new threads, and I am merely putting my point of view out there, and don’t really care to argue over bizarre idealist mumbo jumbo.
I think there may be a misunderstanding here. The hard problem of consciousness asks why experience exists at all. Satoru Watanabe’s work addresses a different question: under what structural conditions facts become well-defined.
The appearance of terms like “subjectivity” and “quantum” does not automatically imply quantum mysticism. If those terms trigger that association, the actual argument may not be getting evaluated on its own terms.
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observation is in awareness. Awareness is where “the buck stops”. I believe that the experiment has been done, where the 2-slit experiment is done while checking which slit the particle goes through, thus forcing particle-not-wave, but then the observation is obliterated, … unfortunately I don’t know the result of that experiment ( been too many years: don’t remember )
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?Jacob? or something, in one of Curt Jaimungal’s videos, explained that he’d been trying to convert QM to something comprehensible, & so that meant probability-theory … but what he ended-up-with worked too well: then he discovered that the ONLY difference between normal probability-theory & QM is that QM is non-Markovian: KNOWING is a fundamental-property of QM.
The knowing ALTERS probabilities.
Without knowing, “observation” is bogus.
& all the physicists who go on about how “information” is fundamental, but who simultaneously reject that knowing is physics-real … they’re just doing ideological-gymnastics, in my view.
IF knowing is altered, THEN observation has happened.
That elegant experiment, years ago, running a beam of particles through a superconducting-ring’s center, with a superconducting toroid-envelope around that ring, so IF there was any current flowing 'round-&-'round in it, THEN electromagnetism COULDN’T POSSIBLY affect the stream of particles going through the center: the envelope blocked all electromagnetic-action…
yet it DID affect the beam/stream…
proving that it isn’t the interactions-between-particles’ forces, it is the interaction through the underlying-field…
or, as another interpretation of it would be: “spooky action at a distance”.
Coherences are being formed & destroyed all the time: & Sabine Hossenfelder has stated so, too.
It isn’t something that only-sometimes exists, it is always existing, & always being impinged-on by collisions, collapsing the existing-wave-function, creating replacement-wave-functions…
the point of observation being rooted in awareness, though, is something that the Physicalism/Existentialism religion rejects, since it insists that awareness isn’t real, it is only an emergent delusion/mirage.
Only matter is real, in that religion.
& while “anomalies” may exist, they are powerless to falsify any axioms, of course.
Hofstadter’s “Godel Escher Bach” book was entirely on how axioms control what one cannot know, & what one can.
IF awareness doesn’t exist in a universe … THEN … who gets to claim that there are any “facts” in that universe??
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Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I want to be clear that I’m not denying the reality or importance of awareness itself. I agree that “knowing” plays an essential role in how facts appear to us.
Where I find myself hesitating is in treating awareness as the final stopping point. If awareness alone is taken as the ultimate ground, it becomes difficult to explain why facts stabilize across different observers, or why many physical processes appear to proceed coherently even in situations where awareness does not seem to be present.
A paper that has strongly influenced my thinking approaches this problem without rejecting awareness. Instead, it shifts the ontological work elsewhere: facts are not generated by observation or knowing itself, but stabilize at the level of relational structures and constraints (such as decoherence). Awareness, on this view, emerges within those stabilized structures rather than grounding them.
From this perspective, awareness is real and meaningful, but not required to do the fundamental work of producing facts. I consider this shift to be a key move in addressing the infinite regress problem.
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Treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy of observers.
Can you explain? I don’t understand
Good question — I’ll try to explain what I mean in a very simple way.
Suppose we say that an observation itself creates a fact. Then we immediately have to ask: for whom is that observation a fact?
If observer A observes a system and that act is supposed to generate a fact, then from the perspective of observer B, what exists is not yet a fact, but an interaction involving A. So for it to become a fact for B, B would have to observe A’s observation.
But then the same question repeats: for whom is that observation a fact?
Unless we arbitrarily declare that “this level counts as final,” we are pushed toward an infinite chain of observers observing observers.
That’s all I mean by saying that treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy. My worry is not empirical, but structural: where does the chain legitimately stop, and why?
Ah I see what you mean. Thanks for explaining.
I think one way to get around this is to frame changes in the double slit experiment as changes in physical state. Changes of physical state are of course changes in fact, but this framing avoids the regress problem because these facts are publicly accessible and viewable by all observers (there is no question of for who it is a fact for).
For example, if I turn on the tap, it is a fact for me that I turned on the tap, but it’s also a fact for everybody; anyone can come and see that the water’s running. There is no infinite regress. And as far as I’m aware the set-up is similar for the double-slit experiment: if you collapse a wave function through observation, I can come along and see what you’ve done. So this change in state is publicly accessible: it’s not a change in state for anyone in particular.
Of course matters are a bit more complex than that because in some interpretations of quantum mechanics you could construct a technically possible in principle (though impossible in practice) scenario where I am in a superposition but you are not, so what wave forms appear to be collapsed is no longer publicly accessible information; these become facts to particular observers. There are ways of getting around this that avoid infinite regress but we don’t need to deal with them here. Because those scenarios are impossible under interpretations where observation is responsible for collapsing the wave function. If I can collapse superpositions just by observing them, then I could never be in a scenario where I’m in a superposition, because I’m always observing myself (at least peripherally)
Thank you — your position is much clearer now.
I agree that framing the double-slit experiment as a change in physical state, and moreover as a publicly accessible fact, does seem to dissolve the infinite regress at first glance. The analogy with turning on a tap is especially helpful in making that intuition clear.
Building on that, a paper I was recently influenced by shifts the question just slightly. Its focus is not on who observes, but on when and by what mechanism a physical state becomes stable as something publicly accessible in the first place.
From that perspective, treating observation as an active, fact-generating process tends to reintroduce the question of “for whom” the observation itself is a fact. To avoid this, the paper treats observation as fundamentally passive, and locates the stabilization of facts not in the act of observation itself, but at the level of relational structure and global constraints (for example, decoherence).
In this view, it’s not that a fact becomes settled because someone observes it; rather, it is because it is already structurally settled that it can be confirmed in the same way by anyone. For me, this reframing seems to offer one possible way of addressing the regress without introducing a privileged observer.
Yes, the way you described sounds like it should work too. Are you describing the ‘relational quantum mechanics’ interpretation?
That’s a very natural way to read it, and I can see why it sounds close to Relational Quantum Mechanics.
I do think there’s a strong overlap — especially in rejecting a privileged observer and in treating facts as non-absolute. But the position I’m circling around is not quite RQM as such. It’s more a hesitation about where the explanatory work is being done.
In RQM, facts are still said to come into being through interactions between systems, relative to one another. What I find myself questioning is whether treating interaction itself as the point where facts are generated already assumes a kind of stability that hasn’t yet been accounted for.
The line of thought I’ve been exploring shifts the burden slightly: observation and interaction are treated as fundamentally passive, while the stabilization of facts is located at a deeper structural level — not in “who interacts with whom,” but in the relational constraints that make certain outcomes stable and publicly confirmable at all.
So it’s close to RQM in spirit, but I’d say it’s probing a layer just underneath it, rather than offering an alternative interpretation in the usual sense.
Are you using ChatGTP to generate these responses?
@ageedizzle @Laura
I’m using ChatGPT for computer help and search of book and movie onlyI do sometimes use tools to help with phrasing or to think things through more clearly. That said, the questions and positions I’m raising are my own, and I’m here in good faith to explore the ideas together.
I should also mention that I’m Japanese and not fluent in English, so I use ChatGPT to help translate my thoughts into English. Because of that, some phrasing may come across a bit unnatural.
