2. A Functional-Semiotic Reinterpretation of QM

Reality Is Not What It Seems, Because It Is Meaning: Part 2 - What Quantum Mechanics Tells Us

In the first post of this series, we proposed that the reality disclosed by modern physics cannot be taken at face value. Instead, we suggested that the apparent strangeness of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics arises not from any flaw in the theories themselves, but from metaphysical assumptions we bring to them. Specifically, we argued that both theories can be reinterpreted coherently if we adopt a semiotic ontology—one in which reality is construed not as a fixed external world independent of observers, but as a world of meaning, actualised by and for observers through systems of signs. In this post, we turn our attention to Quantum Mechanics (QM), where the tension between theory and metaphysics is perhaps most acute.

The strangeness of QM is legendary. Particles are said to exist in superpositions, with no definite location until measured. The act of observation is said to collapse a wavefunction, transforming a range of potential outcomes into a single actuality. Entangled particles appear to influence each other instantaneously, across vast distances, violating classical intuitions about causality and locality. These phenomena have led to decades of interpretive controversy. But at the root of many of these controversies lies a shared assumption: that the wavefunction describes something real and independent, and that measurement simply reveals what was already there.

The semiotic alternative begins by challenging this assumption. It proposes that the wavefunction does not describe an independently existing quantum state. Instead, it construes the wavefunction as a semiotic potential—a probability distribution representing the range of possible instances that may be actualised through observation. In this view, the act of measurement does not uncover a hidden reality; it transforms potential into instance. The wavefunction is not a thing but a meaning potential, and measurement is an act of semiosis: it instantiates one possible meaning from a structured system of possibilities.

On this view, the so-called 'collapse' of the wavefunction is not a mysterious physical jump but a semiotic transition—from potential meaning to meaning instance. Importantly, this does not make QM any less empirical or predictive. The mathematics of QM remains intact, but its interpretation shifts. Instead of searching for a hidden ontology beneath the formalism, we take the formalism itself as a semiotic system, and the observer as a necessary participant in the realisation of meaning.

This approach not only resolves many of the philosophical puzzles surrounding QM, but aligns more closely with the theory's own practice. After all, physicists do not observe wavefunctions directly; they construct them as part of a predictive system, grounded in measurement outcomes. The wavefunction is a tool for predicting meaning instances—not a window into a hidden substratum of reality. In this sense, the semiotic construal takes QM seriously on its own terms, rather than trying to force it into a metaphysical framework inherited from classical physics.

Moreover, this perspective aligns with insights from other fields. In biology, for instance, Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) treats perception and cognition as selectional processes, in which meaning emerges through interaction, not representation. In linguistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) treats language not as a mirror of reality but as a system of meaning potential actualised in context. The semiotic view of QM echoes these perspectives: what is real is what is instantiated in the act of observation, from a structured potential that reflects prior patterns of actualisation.

In this light, the observer is not an intruder upon an otherwise objective world, but a necessary participant in reality's unfolding. Observation is not a passive act of reception but a process of meaning-making, in which potential becomes actual. Reality, then, is not made of things but of meanings; not discovered, but construed.

In the final post of this series, we will show how this semiotic ontology can reframe the so-called 'measurement problem' in Quantum Mechanics, and how it enables us to resolve longstanding paradoxes without abandoning the empirical successes of the theory. We will argue that what collapses is not a wave, but the illusion of a world independent of meaning.