Measurement as the Actualisation of Meaning

Quantum measurement is often described as a kind of magical collapse — a discontinuous leap from a fuzzy superposition to a definite outcome. This image has haunted generations of physicists and philosophers, prompting interpretations that invoke consciousness, many worlds, or hidden variables.

But once we discard the idea that reality is made of “things” with pre-existing properties, this mystery dissolves.

From the standpoint of relational ontology, measurement is not a physical disturbance or a metaphysical puzzle.

It is the actualisation of meaning — the enactment of a phenomenon across a perspectival cut.

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1. The Classical Picture: Measurement as Revelation

In the classical worldview, measurement reveals something:

• The system has properties.

• The measurement uncovers them.

• Uncertainty reflects ignorance.

This view treats the world as determinate — and measurement as passive observation.

But quantum theory shattered this image. Outcomes are not revealed — they are created. Uncertainty is not ignorance — it is constitutive.

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2. The Relational Turn: Measurement as Cut

In relational ontology, we do not begin with systems in the world.

Instead, we begin with fields of potentiality — structured systems of possibility that can be cut into perspectives.

A measurement is just such a cut:

• It establishes a distinction (this vs. that),

• It constrains what counts as a phenomenon,

• And in so doing, it actualises meaning from potential.

Measurement doesn’t tell us about what “was already there.”

It enacts what counts as real, relative to the cut.

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3. Actualisation is Not Collapse

From this view, there is no need to posit a collapse of the wavefunction.

That metaphor belongs to a picture in which:

• The system has a true but hidden state,

• Measurement “snaps” the state to match the outcome.

But if there is no state without a construal — no values without a cut — then there is nothing to collapse.

What appears as “collapse” is actually the transition from potentiality to actualisation, always within a particular construal.

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4. Meaning is Relational, Not Local

In the classical picture, each subsystem carries its own values, locally instantiated.

In the relational picture:

• Meaning is not located in a subsystem.

• It emerges relationally, across the whole construal.

• The act of measuring is the act of distinguishing — and that distinction is constitutive.

Thus, a measurement doesn’t probe the system.

It defines it.

It says: “From this cut, with these constraints, this is what emerges.”

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5. The Phenomenon as First-Order Meaning

This brings us to a crucial insight:

A quantum phenomenon is a first-order construal — a meaningful event that emerges across a perspectival boundary.

It is not an observation of reality.

It is the constitution of reality, at that level of meaning.

• There is no phenomenon without a cut.

• There is no outcome without a construal.

• And there is no “real” behind the event — the event is the reality at that level.

This does not make reality subjective.

It makes it relational — dependent not on minds, but on perspectival structure.

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Closing

To measure is not to discover, but to constitute.

To observe is not to reveal, but to enact.

Measurement is not the collapse of a state — it is the construal of meaning across a cut.

And once we grasp this, the infamous “measurement problem” dissolves.

There is no problem. Only a change in how we understand what it means to mean.

In the next post, we’ll explore how this perspective reshapes the concept of information — no longer as an objective quantity, but as the structure of relevance within a construal.