Saturday, June 3, 2017

Observer Effect and Interpreter Effect

Einstein's objection to some of the varieties of the Observer Effect--that Observer and Observed are independent, in combination with his Relativism, amounts to standard Perspectivism, in opposition to Phenomenalism.  However, he does not consider the possibility that Physics is not Description, but Interpretation, in which case the Observer Effect is actually the Interpreter Effect.  Now, in a familiar example of Interpretation, Translation, the Translator converts a word in one language into that in another.  Hence, in the Translator-Translated relation, the Translated is effected by the process of Translation, and yet is also separate from the Translator.  Furthermore, where Physics is plainly interpretive is in the process of quantatification, which, as the various approximations that are employed indicate, is not descriptive.  So, by not considering the possibility that the Observer Effect is actually the more complicated Interpreter Effect, Einstein does not address all the ways that the Physicist might affect the objects of study in the process of studying them.

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