2
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?
-
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 )
-
?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??
_ /\ _
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.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
2 points (75.0% liked)
Philosophy
2309 readers
8 users here now
All about Philosophy.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS