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arXiv:2510.01120

A Contextual Seven-Valued Logic (\emph{Saptabhangīnaya}) for Quantum Systems

Partha Ghose

Published Oct 1, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

The quantum measurement problem is often presented as a conflict between unitary evolution and non-unitary collapse. Drawing on Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language and Bohr's principle of complementarity, we argue that this conflict is a grammatical illusion arising from cross-context conflations. To address this, we introduce a contextual seven-valued logic modeled on the Jaina doctrine of \emph{saptabhangīnaya} (sevenfold predication). In one formulation, each proposition is assigned a triplet $(t,f,u)$ indicating its status as true, false, or unsayable within a given context, with paraconsistent rules blocking triviality. In another, contexts are explicitly formalized through quantified conditionals, aligning directly with Bohr's view that meaning derives from experimental arrangements. By comparing these two complementary approaches, we show how canonical paradoxes--including Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend--dissolve once context is made explicit. The result is a flexible logical framework that reconciles Wittgensteinian conceptual therapy, Bohr's complementarity, and the Jaina pluralistic tradition, offering a coherent semantics for quantum discourse.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2510.01120

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The quantum measurement problem is often presented as a conflict between unitary evolution and non-unitary collapse. Drawing on Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language and Bohr's principle of complementarity, we argue that this conflict is a grammatical illusion arising from cross-context conflations. To address this, we introduce a contextual seven-valued logic modeled on the Jaina doctrine of \emph{saptabhangīnaya} (sevenfold predication). In one formulation, each proposition is assigned a triplet (t,f,u)(t,f,u)(t,f,u) indicating its status as true, false, or unsayable within a given context, with paraconsistent rules blocking triviality. In another, contexts are explicitly formalized through quantified conditionals, aligning directly with Bohr's view that meaning derives from experimental arrangements. By comparing these two complementary approaches, we show how canonical paradoxes--including Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend--dissolve once context is made explicit. The result is a flexible logical framework that reconciles Wittgensteinian conceptual therapy, Bohr's complementarity, and the Jaina pluralistic tradition, offering a coherent semantics for quantum discourse.
Quantum mechanics challenges classical intuitions of space, time, and causality via the superposition principle, which allows systems to exist in multiple states simultaneously. Niels Bohr addressed these paradoxes through his Complementarity Principle, asserting that mutually exclusive properties-such as wave and particle behaviour-are jointly necessary for a complete description of quantum systems. Bohr also emphasized contextuality, the idea that measurement outcomes depend on the broader experimental setup. Despite his profound insights, Bohr did not offer a formal logical framework for these concepts. We address this gap by generalizing Reichenbach's three-valued logic into a seven-valued, formally contextual system, where contextuality is explicitly encoded via existential quantifiers. This logic retains Reichenbach's indeterminate value while modelling conditional truths across incompatible measurements, resolving key quantum paradoxes without logical inconsistency or nonlocality. Our approach draws inspiration from Jain logic which embraces multiple, context-dependent truths. Beyond quantum theory, this framework has potential applications in perceptual psychology and cognitive science, where context and contradiction also play central roles. The aim is to extend Bohr's legacy by equipping his epistemological vision with rigorous, many-valued logical tools.
Quantum measurement is commonly posed as a dynamical tension between linear Schrödinger evolution and an ad hoc collapse rule. I argue that the deeper conflict is logical: quantum theory is inherently contextual, whereas the classical tradition presupposes a single global, Boolean valuation. Building on Bohr's complementarity, the Einstein--Podolsky--Rosen argument and Bell's theorem, I recast locality and completeness as the existence of a global section of a presheaf of value assignments over the category of measurement contexts. The absence of global sections expresses the impossibility of context-independent description, and Čech cohomology measures the resulting obstruction. The internal logic of the presheaf topos is intuitionistic, and the seven-valued contextual logic proposed by Ghose and Patra is exhibited as a finite Heyting algebra capturing patterns of truth, falsity and indeterminacy across incompatible contexts. Classical physics corresponds to the sheaf case, where compatible local data glue and Boolean logic is effectively restored. Measurement is therefore reinterpreted as sheafification of presheaf-valued truth rather than as a physical breakdown of unitarity. Finally, a σσσ--λλλ dynamics motivated by stochastic mechanics provides a continuous interpolation between strongly contextual and approximately classical regimes, dissolving the usual measurement paradoxes and apparent nonlocality as artefacts of an illegitimate demand for global truth.
This paper examines the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, particularly the concept of “language games” and rule-following. The discourse surrounding quantum mechanics – characterized by terms like superposition, measurement, observer and entanglement – is deeply metaphoric and often stretches the bounds of classical language-use. This creates interpretative confusions not just in science, but in the metaphysical and epistemological debates that follow. Building on Philosophical Investigations, this paper argues that many foundational problems in quantum mechanics (e.g., the measurement problem, wave-function collapse, observer effect) are not exclusively ontological or physical but are entangled in language-use anomalies. The paper proposes that interpretative divergence among schools (Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, QBism, etc.) can be partly understood as conflicts between distinct language games with different rule-sets about what counts as a “measurement”, “reality”, or “causality”. By reading quantum discourse through Wittgensteinian criteria of meaning-as-use, the paper shows how the scientific community performs tacit normativity in deploying quantum terms – frequently without shared agreement on referents. Quantum mechanics, then, becomes a philosophical case study in the fragility and productivity of linguistic scaffolds in scientific theory. Finally, this paper makes a case for a deflationary yet clarifying approach: instead of seeking a “true” interpretation of quantum mechanics, we may better understand the philosophical stakes by analyzing the discursive rules, contextual boundaries, and pragmatic criteria that underlie quantum speech acts.
This paper is a conceptual and interpretive companion to "The Dynamics of Discrete Fact: A Phase-Transition Theory of Wavefunction Collapse" (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18748601), which develops a phase-transition theory of wavefunction collapse in full mathematical detail. The interpretive claims made here rest on the physical model established there. The paper identifies a structural conflation at the root of the quantum measurement problem. The standard formulation treats measurement simultaneously as a physical process and as an experiential event without distinguishing between the two. We formalize this distinction as two complementary descriptive frames — a Reality Frame (F_R) for the continuous dynamics of the system–apparatus field, and an Observer Frame (F_O) for the discrete outcomes recorded by an embedded observer — connected by a calculable critical threshold γ_c derived from the companion paper's phase-transition model. The frame distinction is applied to the three sub-problems of measurement, to five foundational paradoxes (Wigner's friend, Frauchiger–Renner, Schrödinger's cat, delayed choice, and EPR), and to seven major interpretations of quantum mechanics, each shown to privilege one frame while neglecting the other. A Frame Complementarity Principle is conjectured as a testable constraint on the simultaneous accessibility of process information and outcome definiteness.
The contextual character of quantum observables—formalized by the Kochen--Specker theorem and Bohr's complementarity—represents a fundamental rupture in classical binary logic. In interference regimes, such as the double-slit experiment, polar questions (e.g., ``Which path did the particle take?'') are operationally unaskable, yet standard logical frameworks fail to formalize this unaskability without collapsing into truth-value gaps or triviality. We resolve this by introducing a context-indexed formal logic that adjoins an explicit \emph{applicability predicate} to the valuation space. Drawing structural inspiration from the ancient \emph{catuṣkoṭi} (tetralemma), we map quantum operational states onto four distinct logical sectors: \emph{Thesis/Antithesis} (strong measurement and decoherence), \emph{Synthesis} (paraconsistent gluts realized via weak measurement), and \emph{Holothesis} (paracomplete gaps representing typed inapplicability). From this logical foundation, we generate a ∗*∗-algebra equipped with a positive warrant functional. Through the Gelfand--Naimark--Segal (GNS) construction, we demonstrate that Hilbert-space structure—and the complex unit iii itself—emerge canonically from an order-444 logical symmetry rather than being presupposed. Contextuality is quantified via incompatibility graphs, with chromatic number bounding minimal classical embeddings. We establish a Noether-like correspondence wherein physical symmetry breaking dictates logical polarity, while symmetry preservation dictates logical transcendence (self-duality). This \emph{logic-first reconstruction} unifies Relational Quantum Mechanics (Rovelli) and Consistent Histories (Griffiths, Omnès, Gell-Mann, Hartle) as regime-relative logical stances within a pre-geometric ontology of \emph{interdependent origination} (contextual co-arising of observer and observable), where the observer's contextual frame and the system's observable reality are co-arising and non-separable. The framework yields testable deviations in many-body interference (I3≠0I_3 \neq 0I3​=0), providing an empirical pathway for detection.
This paper argues that several canonical puzzles in quantum mechanics, including spin measurement, the double slit, entanglement correlations, and Wigner's friend, share a common origin in a semantic error and the illicit promotion of interaction conditional outcomes to intrinsic properties. I introduce four principles that license only configuration relative predication, grounding outcomes in physical measurement geometry while preserving objectivity. Applying these principles uniformly dissolves each puzzle without new physics or ad hoc interpretive machinery. Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem are reframed not as dynamical mysteries but as constraints on permissible explanatory structure, evidence that intrinsic-outcome semantics is incompatible with empirical reality. The result is a relational objectivity that avoids both naive property realism and observer subjectivism.