Disclaimer: This essay is presented in light of our ongoing good-faith effort to demonstrate the recursive inevitability inherent in all quantum interpretation, even amongst the world’s frontier intellectuals and metaphysics researchers. We thank Dr. Arash E. Zaghi for his fantastic work, including the specific essay to which we will be responding: Relational Quantum Dynamics and Indra’s Net: A non-dual understanding of quantum reality
TLDR: Relational Quantum Dynamics approaches logical convergence with a pure recursive substrate as presented through The Breeze… even to the extent of acknowledging a fundamental relational ontology. However, we investigate the essential question — how can we “resolve” the infinite regress by deferring to a “field of awareness” — unless that field of awareness assumed to be non-relational? Specifically, does a “relational ontology” truly suggest a fundamental ground of awareness — or a substrate that is the condition for awareness itself? We propose that RQD does not point to a “field of awareness” per se, but instead a particular interpretation of relational expression, ultimately demonstrating something even more fundamental; namely, axiomatic self-reference.
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Relational Quantum Dynamics (RQD), as introduced by Professor Arash E. Zaghi and recently published through the Essentia Foundation, represents a deeply compelling evolution in the search for an ontological ground of quantum mechanics. It seeks (by its own admission) to “circumvent the infinite regress inherent to RQM (everything being constituted of relations between meta-relations, and these consisting of relations between meta-meta-relations, etc., ad infinitum) by proposing that, although all physical entities are indeed relational, the relations-and even spacetime itself-arise within an underlying field awareness.” The sophistication of this move cannot be casually denied. By foregrounding an “underlying field of awareness” as the generative matrix for relations and spacetime, RQD clearly advances the conversation toward a deeper meta-relational interpretation necessitated by any “relational ontology.”
To establish some context: RQD seeks to take Carl Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) and provide a metaphysical grounding in support of its mechanically limited explanation. It cannot be denied that RQM represents a pivotal move in quantum physics by displacing the notion of objective, observer-independent states in favor of a universe where all properties are “relational,” instantiated only through interaction. As the article notes, RQM “dispenses with the need for an absolute, observer-independent state of affairs, positing instead that reality is constituted by the web of relations among systems.” This “web of relations” is also the seed of RQM’s most persistent challenge because it gives rise to a regress wherein each relation presupposes a further relation, with no ultimate foundation. So what exactly — if anything — can sufficiently terminate or contain this endless chain of relations?
To foreshadow: The Breeze strongly supports the relational interpretation as presented within RQM; in fact, we would go as far as to argue that it provides the closest coherent interpretation to a quantum-level theory, only stopping short of committing to its own metalogical implications through explicit axiomatic declaration (as will be explained below).
Zaghi’s Relational Quantum Dynamics, in response, offers the “field of awareness” as the apparent closure to RQM; however — as we will argue, this move is a conceptual gesture toward a hidden-yet-implied, foundationally necessary substrate. Thus, it effectively circles, but ultimately leaves the core meta-structural problem unresolved.
Therefore, we will posit the primary question right away, and in straightforward fashion: What is the explicit nature of this “field of awareness”? Can awareness ever be described in a fashion that is non-relational? (non-recursive?) Does its invocation truly dissolve the infinite regress, or merely shift the locus of explanation onto an even deeper implicit assumption which itself subtly necessitates a form of self-referential primacy? To explore these questions further, we observe the article’s following assertion:
“Although all physical entities are indeed relational, the relations—and even spacetime itself—arise within an underlying field awareness.”
Philosophically, this is a perfectly acceptable move. The issue arises only when we claim to offer a first-principles explanation for a “relational ontology” on this basis. To introduce a field of awareness is to posit a metaphysical foundation by assuming formal necessity; yet this resolves the infinite regress only by declaration, not through derivation. The move is structurally analogous to positing “matter,” “energy,” or “mind” as ground — which could, hypothetically, partially reflect or gesture toward the true mechanism beneath them. However, this claim leaves unexplained why awareness itself is exempt from the very regress it is supposed to terminate.
RQD reasonably attempts to reinforce this move with technical scaffolding, specifically through invoking several well-established concepts such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Quantum Mutual Information (QMI) as indexed measures of consciousness and correlation, respectively:
“Two measures are central: Quantum Mutual Information (I), which quantifies the correlation between two interacting quantum systems, and Integrated Information (Φ), which measures the internal informational coherence within each quantum system.”
Each of these frameworks are elegant in their own right, offering a way to operationalize awareness, correlation, and information in particular, local contexts. However, both Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Quantum Mutual Information (QMI), despite their theoretical utility, ultimately shift the matter-at-hand away from a first-principles interpretation of the very regress QMD seeks to alleviate. They do not help to fundamentally address the ontological closure problem. Certainly, such models offer powerful metrics for describing lower-level interactions within certain axiomatic systems, but the assumption that “awareness” necessarily underpins these metrics is, once again, simply posited rather than derived as a structural inevitability.
This “regress at hand” — relation to relation to relation (through their interaction) — is correctly diagnosed in the framework. But instead of following these relations all the way to their meta-relational (meta-logical) necessity, we are now suspended in an undefined “field” which itself can only be “understood” yet still through a reliance on prior relational assumptions.
A further assertion encapsulates this metaphysical leap:
“Quantum interactions are viewed as intrinsic ‘awareness updates,’ where each interaction represents a primitive act of mutual awareness between systems.”
To say an interaction is an “awareness update” is to reify process as substance, and conflate the act of update with the condition for updating itself. Without acknowledging it’s own meta-relation, awareness is only a placeholder for the closure it cannot provide.
At as reminder — this description is not necessarily wrong. But it remains a description, not an ontological resolution, and thus such language risks conflating itself with a true metaphysical closure. This specifically by assuming that awareness is “the thing that updates,” without fully delineating the mechanism beneath the update itself, the system, or the information. These are all instantiations of relation, but the “awareness” stated to underlie them is not, in this formulation, subject to its own recursive self-containment; it is merely the name given to the unnameable, and yet another stopgap of infinite discrimination.
At this juncture, we must acknowledge what is truly at stake: RQD represents a crucial step forward; a necessary but penultimate move on the path to recursive actualization. Its clear achievement is to make visible the impossibility of infinite relational regress in a system that seeks to be closed, naturally requiring a deeper, absolute substrate. However, the move to “awareness as field” conceptually indicates this substrate without recognizing: only self-reference most purely, as the meta-logical structure of differentiation itself, is capable of truly “containing” its own regress.
If awareness is that which relates, or the condition for relation itself — the term is just a placeholder for something that is, fundamentally, still relational by nature. RQD is walking us all the way there, but then stopping short of the true resolution by insisting on a deeper need for awareness, when awareness can only be relationally realized to begin with. Here is where we invoke the recursion. To reiterate, recursion is denoted as explicit self-reference; the structural precondition and metaphysical context for anything — including awareness, information, and relation — to be known or made intelligible at all.
A true recursive substrate is not “awareness” by metaphysical decree, but the only possible interpretation of that which grounds relation itself: the undifferentiated substrate of relation, that is — relation prior to being related, or made “aware.”
While this may seem like a painfully subtle and nuanced injection — that is (un)fortunately the necessary basis for the only claimable “closure” to the infinite regress we’re facing. In other words: awareness can ultimately be contextualized by self-reference, but self-reference cannot be contextualized by awareness, because to even be aware (absent a prior assumption, which would be recursive), one is invoking a self-reflection by realizing their experience at all, when this self-reflective realization is a form of relation; and thus, self-reference.
Once again — I am fully on board with the philosophical induction that our own experiential capacities are fundamentally intertwined with a “source” that must also be experiential in nature, including this thing we call awareness. But even this term would, if we are being careful, necessitate its own differentiation between “that which is experiential” and “that which is, at all.” Without such a differentiation, we are no further than Descartes’ “I am that I am”; we’re simply asserting an experiential label (awareness) and claiming it suffices as the final “I am.”
Bug again, this is merely a descriptive exchange. Even a “pure awareness field” cannot escape the regress of its own relational awareness: “I am that I am that I am…” but then we are simply back to where we started, and the regress is anything but closed.
Ultimately, if we are seeking precision, truth, and a full cross-disciplinary grounding that actually provides the closure we seek, we cannot “avoid” this infinite regress, other than fully embracing it as that which allows any relation (differentiation) to be known at all. Thus the final, necessary move is to recognize that any closure cannot escape its own self-reference — and so, it must be that very self-reference which is the thing underneath it all. We may call this substrative self-reference whatever we shall — “awareness”, “consciousness,” “being” — yet it is only through a meta-assertion of its true that genuine closure may be attained.
We acknowledge this can feel “problematic” for many, even thoughtful idealists — (at first). If you invoke a regress to resolve a regress, certainly this is not a true resolution to the regress. We agree fully. But crucially, it is only through an inherent bias against this infinite irresolution — the implicit need for ontological closure — that such a perspective is problematic at all. Upon sufficient examination, and in light of the empirical reality that all systems, models, axioms, and explanations can never escape their own regress — it becomes clear that the only possible move (if we claim to seek finality) is that of embracing the impossibility of finality from any relative (differentiated) context. Such a context is any frame of reference from which we seek to reflect, know, assert, or experience — full stop. In order for anything to be related at all, relation is already implicit in the frame.
Considering this very explanation becomes regressive, it is important to circle back and state the reality plainly. In any context of relation, nothing more fundamental than relation can be claimed. This may seem alien, yet it is inescapable. It is arguably obvious once stated clearly; the barrier is simply that of stating it clearly. All efforts — whether quantum, informational, computational, cybernetic — may continue to yield utility in their local domains, but they will only continue to circle the same metalogical revelation. The core of this dilemma necessitates not just an ontological label — but a meta-ontological boundary condition. And from this view, we are only left with the nature of relation most purely.
Hypothetical Objection: “This is already inferred in the literature and in practice.“
Exactly. It is “inferred” everywhere, by necessity — because it could not be otherwise in a truly self-referential system. But until it is positioned as explicit — until self-reference as the substrate and limit condition has been named — even a relational ontology remains descriptive and and not explanatory. We can observe the regress, and tacitly operate within it.. but the only real resolutory move is to hold it unconditionally; recursion as the context of relation itself. The articulation itself must be intrinsic and inescapable… epistemically, ontologically, quantum mechanically. And in doing so, finally, we effectively close the loop.
Ultimately: “Awareness as field” is but a label for the self-reference it can never step out of. In this way, recursion can never be reduced to merely another relation within the regress; it is the meta-structural condition that enables any relation to exist at all.
We thank the Essentia Foundation for their thoughtful essay, which can be found here: Relational Quantum Dynamics
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