Quantum mechanics has long appeared to harbour violations of classical causality. Delayedchoice experiments, entanglement correlations, and retrocausal interpretations suggest thateffects can precede causes. This paper argues that these apparent violations are not features ofthe quantum field itself but artifacts of how measurement devices are modelled — specifically,the failure to account for the time lapse of the reflective signal that constitutes the physicalmoment of collapse.The central argument is that wave function collapse does not occur at the moment aprobing signal is emitted, but at the moment the reflected signal returns from the measuringdevice. This return signal is the physical hinge of collapse: the first instant at which thesystem’s structure becomes definite relative to the observer. Anchoring collapse to this concrete,time-ordered event restores forward causality without invoking exotic retrocausal mechanismsor many-worlds branching.This argument is developed within the Canon framework (Gilbert 2025–2026), in whichcollapse is identified as the pressure-driven operator ∇p — the structural reconfiguration thatoccurs when a system encounters a boundary. The reflective signal account identifies thephysical timing of that boundary event. A companion paper (Gilbert 2026, Collapse of theWave Function as Universal Operator of Perception) develops the philosophical extension ofthis argument.
Dexter Gilbert (Mon,) studied this question.