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.

Thank you very much for this thoughtful comment. I think your formulation of the infinite regress problem is exactly right, and it is one of the main reasons why I have never been satisfied with accounts that treat observation as an active process that generates facts.

In fact, the very regress you describe is explicitly addressed in a paper I shared recently (the one dealing with absolute subjectivity and generated observers). One of its central claims is that as long as observation is treated as a physical interaction that produces facts, the theory is inevitably driven—exactly as you describe—either toward an arbitrary stopping point or toward an infinite regress in which observers must themselves be observed.

The approach taken in that paper is to shift the locus of fact-formation entirely away from observation itself. Observation is treated as fundamentally passive, while the stabilization of facts occurs not through observational acts, but at the level of relational structure itself—through decoherence and global constraints. In other words, the regress is not halted by positing a privileged observer, but dissolved by rejecting the assumption that observation is what performs the ontological work in the first place.

For this reason, I found your emphasis on the distinction between observer-dependence and contextuality especially resonant. The paper argues for almost exactly the same point: reality is thoroughly contextual, but not observer-dependent in an anthropomorphic sense. What we call an “observer” is itself a product of stabilized relational structure, not its origin.

As a side note, I have already shared the first and second papers of this series with you in replies to other posts.

The work as a whole consists of six papers, and given the way you have framed the infinite regress issue here, I think the fifth paper is the most directly relevant to your current comment. I would therefore like to share this fifth paper with you now.

After reading it, I would be very interested to hear whether you think this approach genuinely succeeds in avoiding the infinite regress you describe, or whether it merely relocates the problem elsewhere.

(Link to the paper) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399613726_Non-transitive_Correlation_Structure_among_EEG_Brain_Topology_and_Quantum_Computation_A_Time-Series_Analysis_of_Subjectivity_Alignment_Conditions

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.

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.

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?

I understand your position, and it makes sense to me. That there is a material world, and that our cognition gradually approaches a more accurate understanding of it.

What I find myself hesitating over, though, is this point: from where do we judge that our understanding is actually “getting closer” to the truth?

If we are always already within a self-recognized material world, what functions as the external reference that allows us to say that one stage of cognition is more accurate than another?

I’m not trying to deny the existence of the world. I’m wondering whether there is a distinction between a world that exists and a world that becomes stable as a world for us.

It seems to me that some relational process might sit between those two. I’m curious how you see this.