I do sometimes use tools to help with phrasing or to think things through more clearly. That said, the questions and positions I’m raising are my own, and I’m here in good faith to explore the ideas together.

I should also mention that I’m Japanese and not fluent in English, so I use ChatGPT to help translate my thoughts into English. Because of that, some phrasing may come across a bit unnatural.

That’s a very natural way to read it, and I can see why it sounds close to Relational Quantum Mechanics.

I do think there’s a strong overlap — especially in rejecting a privileged observer and in treating facts as non-absolute. But the position I’m circling around is not quite RQM as such. It’s more a hesitation about where the explanatory work is being done.

In RQM, facts are still said to come into being through interactions between systems, relative to one another. What I find myself questioning is whether treating interaction itself as the point where facts are generated already assumes a kind of stability that hasn’t yet been accounted for.

The line of thought I’ve been exploring shifts the burden slightly: observation and interaction are treated as fundamentally passive, while the stabilization of facts is located at a deeper structural level — not in “who interacts with whom,” but in the relational constraints that make certain outcomes stable and publicly confirmable at all.

So it’s close to RQM in spirit, but I’d say it’s probing a layer just underneath it, rather than offering an alternative interpretation in the usual sense.

Thank you — your position is much clearer now.

I agree that framing the double-slit experiment as a change in physical state, and moreover as a publicly accessible fact, does seem to dissolve the infinite regress at first glance. The analogy with turning on a tap is especially helpful in making that intuition clear.

Building on that, a paper I was recently influenced by shifts the question just slightly. Its focus is not on who observes, but on when and by what mechanism a physical state becomes stable as something publicly accessible in the first place.

From that perspective, treating observation as an active, fact-generating process tends to reintroduce the question of “for whom” the observation itself is a fact. To avoid this, the paper treats observation as fundamentally passive, and locates the stabilization of facts not in the act of observation itself, but at the level of relational structure and global constraints (for example, decoherence).

In this view, it’s not that a fact becomes settled because someone observes it; rather, it is because it is already structurally settled that it can be confirmed in the same way by anyone. For me, this reframing seems to offer one possible way of addressing the regress without introducing a privileged observer.

Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I want to be clear that I’m not denying the reality or importance of awareness itself. I agree that “knowing” plays an essential role in how facts appear to us.

Where I find myself hesitating is in treating awareness as the final stopping point. If awareness alone is taken as the ultimate ground, it becomes difficult to explain why facts stabilize across different observers, or why many physical processes appear to proceed coherently even in situations where awareness does not seem to be present.

A paper that has strongly influenced my thinking approaches this problem without rejecting awareness. Instead, it shifts the ontological work elsewhere: facts are not generated by observation or knowing itself, but stabilize at the level of relational structures and constraints (such as decoherence). Awareness, on this view, emerges within those stabilized structures rather than grounding them.

From this perspective, awareness is real and meaningful, but not required to do the fundamental work of producing facts. I consider this shift to be a key move in addressing the infinite regress problem.

Good question — I’ll try to explain what I mean in a very simple way.

Suppose we say that an observation itself creates a fact. Then we immediately have to ask: for whom is that observation a fact?

If observer A observes a system and that act is supposed to generate a fact, then from the perspective of observer B, what exists is not yet a fact, but an interaction involving A. So for it to become a fact for B, B would have to observe A’s observation.

But then the same question repeats: for whom is that observation a fact?

Unless we arbitrarily declare that “this level counts as final,” we are pushed toward an infinite chain of observers observing observers.

That’s all I mean by saying that treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy. My worry is not empirical, but structural: where does the chain legitimately stop, and why?

Thank you for such a thoughtful and sincere comment. I really appreciate the openness of how you approached this.

Just to say upfront, I’m not an academic and I don’t claim any formal or specialized training. Still, I genuinely enjoy having careful, serious conversations with people who are thinking honestly about these questions.

I think your example captures something very real: a question can meaningfully reshape how someone experiences their world, by reorganizing attention, meaning, and interpretation. Once a question is introduced, it can change what stands out and how connections are perceived.

Where I’m still reflecting is on a gentle distinction between how reality is experienced and how facts themselves are constituted. I fully agree that questions can transform the former, and I’m curious how far that transformation should be taken when we talk about reality itself.

In any case, I really value the spirit of your comment — this kind of thoughtful exchange is exactly why I’m here.

I find your account of objectivity as “structure preserved across contexts” quite compelling. In particular, the way you separate context-dependence from subjectivity strikes me as exactly right.

That said, there is one question your argument kept pulling me toward as I was reading it: where does that structure—the one that remains coherent across contexts—actually come from?

In other words, rather than taking invariants like velocity relations or conserved quantities as simply given, what are the conditions under which such structures can come to be consistently across different frames?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this question through a paper that has really captured my attention and hasn’t let go. It doesn’t reject objectivity at all; instead, it focuses on the generative point at which objectivity itself becomes possible. Importantly, this isn’t framed in terms of a conventional observer or conscious subject, but as a kind of generative origin prior to the separation of subject, context, and invariance.

From that perspective, what you describe as “structural facts” appears very close to what the paper treats as a resulting layer. If you’re interested, I think reading it from the angle of “how objectivity becomes possible in the first place” might resonate strongly with your own position.

Thank you for your reply. In that case, I’ll share the original paper I was referring to.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398259486_Empirical_Subjectivity_Intersection_Observer-Quantum_Coherence_Beyond_Existing_Theories_Unifying_Relativity_Quantum_Mechanics_and_Cosmology

I know you’re likely busy, so below is a brief summary of the paper for context.

↓↓↓ This paper does not adopt the common constructivist view that reality is constituted or produced by the subject’s acts of meaning-making. Rather, it asks a more fundamental question: under what structural conditions can something appear as “reality” at all and stabilize as an observable phenomenon. In this framework, subjectivity is not treated as a psychological state, a representational layer, or a source of cognitive distortion, but is redefined as a generative condition that makes coherence itself possible.

The central claim of the paper is not that observation or consciousness “creates” reality, but that observable physical phenomena emerge only when specific conditions are satisfied. These conditions are described as an intersection between a nonlocal, timeless “absolute subjectivity” and a relative subject embedded in spacetime. Reality appears as a meaningful event only when this intersection is established.

Within this framework, the Real is neither denied nor directly accessed. It is understood as something that always exceeds representation, yet becomes manifest only through particular coherence processes. In this sense, the paper avoids both naïve realism, which presupposes a fully observer-independent objective world, and pure constructivism, which reduces reality to subjective construction.

Empirically, the paper examines nonlocal correlations between EEG signals and quantum measurement sequences, arguing that these phenomena cannot be adequately explained by standard causal or correlational models. Instead, they appear only under specific structural conditions. To avoid an infinite regress of “who observes the observer,” the paper proposes an emergent third observer arising from the intersection itself.

In this way, subjectivity is not positioned in opposition to objectivity, but functions as the ground that makes objectivity possible. Reality is not reducible to either pole of the subject–object divide; rather, it emerges as a coherent whole only through the structural conditions that precede that division.

I see why it might sound that way. But I’m not treating subjectivity as something that constructs reality. I’m thinking of it as a condition under which reality can appear and stabilize at all — which is why classical constructivism feels insufficient to me.

If you’d like, I’d be happy to send a brief summary of the original paper that led me in this direction. I’d be very interested to hear how you read it.

That resonates with me. At the same time, I’ve come across a scientific paper that suggests a slightly different possibility: that under certain conditions, reality may not only intervene into us, but emerge with us — not as direct access to the Real, but as a form of co-emergence involving meaning, observation, and agency.

Some recent experimental work even frames this emergence in terms that border on the theological — not God as an object of belief, but as a name for the condition under which co-emergence becomes possible.

That makes sense — thank you for engaging with it so carefully. If you’re ever curious, I’d be happy to share the paper that prompted this line of thinking for me.

Not quite. My concern isn’t the subject–object split itself. I’m approaching subjectivity not as something opposed to objectivity, but as a different kind of condition under which reality can appear as one at all.

I largely agree with you that there may be a Real that exceeds perception and resists epistemological capture.

Where my thinking differs slightly is this: even the moment of “intervention,” “shattering,” or resistance is only intelligible as such if there is already a way in which reality can appear as one.

In other words, I’m not denying the Real beyond experience. I’m questioning the condition under which something can appear as the Real at all.

That condition, as I see it, cannot be reduced to epistemology, but neither can it be eliminated as irrelevant. It points instead to a form of subjectivity that functions not as representation, but as the ground of coherence.

This way of thinking was prompted by encountering a paper that approaches these issues experimentally rather than purely philosophically, and since then my thinking has been moving in this direction.

I think that even what breaks or resists our frameworks already presupposes a form of subjectivity through which reality appears as one.

I largely agree with what you’re saying. I don’t think we need to deny the possibility of an external reality, nor do I think the impossibility of a perfectly “objective” standpoint prevents us from developing highly effective and accurate models.

Where my thinking diverges slightly is here: I don’t see subjectivity merely as a limitation on knowledge, or as noise introduced by being embedded in reality.

I’m increasingly inclined to think that some form of subjectivity is a necessary condition for reality to be intelligible as a unified system at all — not in the sense that it distorts reality, but in the sense that it allows coherence, integration, and unity to appear.

In other words, even very accurate models already presuppose a prior condition under which “this all hangs together” is meaningful.

This line of thought was prompted by encountering a paper that approaches these questions not only philosophically, but through scientific experimentation, and since then my thinking has been moving in this direction.

I agree with you that objectivity is not something supported by evidence in itself, and that it often functions more like a belief that is later rationalized.

And yet, from there, my thinking has started to move in a slightly different direction.

I’ve come to think that some form of subjectivity is unavoidable — not as an individual or relative perspective, but as a necessary condition for reality to appear as one coherent whole at all.

Even if we reject objectivity as a presupposition, the fact that reality is intelligible as a unified system still seems to require an account.

This line of thought was triggered by encountering a particular paper that attempts to approach these questions not only philosophically, but through scientific experimentation. Since then, my thinking has been moving in this direction.

Thank you for the clarification. I understand your position: that the basis for the universe being one whole lies in material interaction itself.

What I keep getting stuck on, though, is what allows interaction itself to count as a single whole.

There seems to be a non-trivial gap between saying that interactions occur and saying that they constitute one universe or one system.

If reality is nothing more than countless material interactions unfolding, then where does the basis come from for identifying that unfolding as one universe rather than mere dispersion?

I’m not trying to deny material interaction. Rather, I’m asking whether the very fact that interaction is intelligible as a whole already presupposes a point of integration that is not identical with interaction itself.

I’m not claiming this must be something “beyond” matter — only that the condition for saying “this is a whole” does not seem to follow automatically from the sum of interactions alone.

I understand the direction you’re pointing to, and I don’t feel that our positions are that far apart.

That said, there is one phrase I’d like to pause on: “an all-encompassing system.”

What exactly does that system refer to?

Because the moment we say that there is a system, we are no longer speaking only about material interactions as such, but about the conditions under which those interactions are intelligible as a whole.

This is the point that keeps catching my attention. If reality is nothing more than material reality interacting with itself, then where does the basis come from for those interactions to cohere as one system?

I’m not suggesting that practice stands outside reality. Rather, I’m asking whether the very coherence of an “all-encompassing system” already presupposes some point of unification that cannot be reduced to material interaction alone.

This is the question that keeps drawing me back to this issue.

The issue, then, is not whether material reality pushes back — I think it clearly does — but whether objectivity should be understood as something that exists fully formed prior to practice, or rather as something that emerges and stabilizes through practice itself.

What led me to take this question seriously was reading a paper that attempts to support precisely this kind of view not at the level of philosophy alone, but through scientific experimentation.

The way it approaches the relationship between observers and physical systems — not in terms of simple causation, but in terms of intersection and stabilization — had a strong impact on me.

To be honest, after reading that paper, I haven’t been able to let this question go. That’s why I keep returning to it here as well.

That’s a very clear way of putting it, and I find your position quite persuasive. We may not be able to know whether the external world truly exists, but by assuming that our senses and memories are not fundamentally deceiving us, we can make meaningful predictions about the consequences of our actions, and only then does intentional action become possible. I agree with that.

What I find myself wondering, though, is where the validity of that assumption itself is stabilized.

If our judgments about whether predictions succeed or fail already take place within some framework of expectations, then it seems that we are not directly confirming the world “as it is,” but rather checking whether our interaction with the world is cohering well enough to support action.

In that sense, I’m less interested in the binary question of whether reality exists or not, and more interested in the conditions under which prediction, action, and revision form a stable loop.

From your perspective, where do you think that stability ultimately resides? In the world itself, in our cognitive capacities, or in the relation between the two?