Quantum mechanics famously encounters a conceptual impasse at the point of measurement. The wavefunction evolves smoothly and deterministically until an observation occurs — at which point, so the standard story goes, it collapses into a definite outcome. But what triggers the collapse? What counts as a measurement? Why this outcome and not another?
These questions are usually framed in terms of epistemology: what we know, or can know, about the system. But at root, the measurement problem is ontological. It arises from a mistaken assumption about individuation — namely, that what is measured is the pre-existing property of a substance. Once we let go of that assumption, the puzzle dissolves.
1. What Is Being Measured?
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In the traditional view, a measurement reveals something the particle already has: position, momentum, spin, etc.,
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But quantum theory itself tells us that such properties are not defined prior to measurement,
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So what, exactly, is being measured? In a relational framework, the answer is: a constrained actualisation of potential, not a revelation of substance.
2. Collapse as Punctualisation
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The so-called “collapse” of the wavefunction is not a physical event in spacetime. It is a perspectival resolution,
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The wavefunction encodes a field of relational affordances — a structured potential for actualisation under constraint,
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Measurement is the cut that selects a local coherence within that field — a punctualisation that appears, from our standpoint, as a discrete outcome.
3. The Observer Is Not the Cause
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Much confusion arises from imagining the observer as the agent who causes collapse,
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But there is no privileged “observer” in a relational field — only nodes of constraint,
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A measurement event is simply a new condition imposed on the field — a new set of constraints under which potential resolves into a particular coherence.
4. Probabilities as Systemic Tensions
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Quantum probabilities are not subjective uncertainties. Nor do they reflect unknown variables,
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They express the structure of potential within the field: how the system is disposed to resolve under specific constraints,
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The probabilistic nature of outcomes is a sign that the system’s coherence admits multiple locally valid resolutions, none of which is prefigured as “real” before the cut.
5. Reframing the Problem
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The measurement problem stems from a mistaken image: that of a particle with properties that become known upon observation,
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In a relational ontology, there is no such particle. There is only a relational field, and a perspective within it,
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Measurement is not a special kind of interaction. It is a moment of individuation — a perspectival construal of potential, made definite under a specific relational cut.
Closing
To revisit the measurement problem is to revisit our deepest assumptions about being and knowing. The issue is not what causes the wavefunction to collapse, but why we ever imagined it had to. Once we recognise that quantum objects are not substances but patterns of constraint resolving under relation, the “problem” becomes a powerful insight into the perspectival nature of actuality.
In the next post, we’ll explore how this reframing clarifies the question of quantum decoherence — and why coherence, not collapse, is the key to understanding the classical world.
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