i know I'm double-posting, but there's been a lull in the discussion on this board.
Okay, I found this brain-buster being discussed on twop, so I decided to investigate it myself because I'd never heard of it, even thought it's been mentioned and alluded to literature and in tons of shows. (How naïve and sheltered and unobservant am I?!)
Schrödinger's Cat
This is a thinking problem whereby a cat placed inside a box is existentially either alive or dead (or both!), but which is actually completely indeterminate until an observer (yes, an observer!) opens the box and observes the state of the cat, or even has remnant memories of the cat, which then in turn allows the cat to exist. I think that's the gist of it, simplistically.
So Peter is the cat... my brain hurts.