Physics, especially quantum theory, has long wrestled with the problem of the observer. Are they external to the system? Internal? Can observation alter outcomes? Does measurement collapse a wavefunction?
From a relational standpoint, these questions dissolve. The observer is not a passive eye nor a distinct agent. The observer is a cut — a perspectival enactment of coherence in a field of possibility.
From Agent to Articulation
In classical thought, the observer is an agent who perceives an objective world. Even in quantum mechanics, this persists — albeit paradoxically. The observer “measures,” and the system “collapses.” But who or what is doing the measuring? And where is the line between observer and system?
Relational ontology reframes the issue: there is no separate observer. There is only the perspectival articulation of the system — a cut in the field, a moment of semantic configuration.
To observe is to enact — to draw a distinction, to actualise a possibility, to integrate constraint.
A Cut Is Not a Subject
We must resist the temptation to anthropomorphise the cut. A cut is not a self. It is not a knower. It is not a perceiving mind.
It is a perspective instantiated — a semantic configuration of the field that delineates what counts as what, what relates to what, and how coherence is maintained.
The so-called “observer” is not observing a world. The observer is the enactment of a world — one among many possible articulations of the same systemic potential.
Reframing the Measurement Problem
In this light, the so-called measurement problem is a misdescription. There is no collapse, no sudden change from superposition to fact. There is only a relational shift: a new cut, a new configuration, a new construal of coherence.
Measurement is not an intervention. It is an instantiation of a perspective — one that constrains future possibilities while remaining consistent with the field.
This makes the observer neither causal nor magical. They are simply co-constitutive: a local articulation of a global potential.
Objectivity as Stability Across Cuts
If each observer is a cut, what becomes of objectivity?
It is not a property of the world, but a property of the system of cuts. Objectivity is stability across construals — the consistency of certain relational patterns across many enactments.
In this view, “what’s real” is not what exists independently of observers. It’s what persists through the shifting horizon of perspectives — what survives coordination.
Selfhood as Recurrent Construal
If observers are cuts, what is a person?
A person is not a singular observer but a system of cuts — a construal profile that maintains certain patterns of coherence across time and interaction. What we call “identity” is the recursive integration of cuts that construe themselves as continuous.
The self, then, is not a substance or essence. It is a relational rhythm — a patterned way of participating in meaning.
We Are the Field Articulating Itself
To observe is to articulate. To exist as an observer is to be a moment of coherence in a field of possibility.
We are not separate from the world we observe. We are cuts within it — perspectival nodes through which it becomes intelligible to itself.
This is not solipsism. It is not idealism. It is the recognition that intelligibility is not added to reality — it is what reality is.
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