This simple argument is devastating. Thus, Penrose notes, they are true because of their meaning , not because of their syntax relation to an axiomatic system. This reinforces the thesis of Jerrold Katz , that syntactic simples are not semantic simples, and so some truths will depend on semantic contents that cannot be exhaustively expressed as syntax. Philosophical implications are also evident in Penrose's evaluation of the difficulties of quantum mechanics. The principal conceptual difficulty is that reality existing in a unique and determined state always applies to the observer and the observer's instruments but only applies to other external objects after they have been observed.
Kantian synthesis is, indeed, the act by which a conscious observer experiences the world.
Quantum mechanics serendipitously supplies a clue. At the same time, Kant's theory that the mind applies the forms of space and time to intuition in the process of bringing it into consciousness does seem to have a parallel in quantum mechanics. The only theory in the history either of philosophy or science that would explain non-locality is Kant's theory of the transcendental ideality of space. Penrose, however, does not notice that possibility. Instead, he seems to labor under traditional misunderstandings of Kant's theory of space and geometry.