This monograph develops and defends Experiential Structural Ontology (ESO), a metaphysical framework constrained by contemporary physics. The framework begins from a tension in contemporary physics: quantum theory replaces classical objecthood with nonseparable relational structure, and several approaches to quantum gravity reconstruct spacetime from deeper organisational relations. Structural realism captures this shift in physical description, yet it leaves open how such structure exists as a concrete world. ESO proposes that experiential manifestation provides a minimal ontological ground capable of rendering relational structure determinate as concrete occurrence. Experience is not introduced as a psychological posit. It names the mode in which relational organisation is present as determinate occurrence. Consciousness, understood as experiential manifestation, is primitive in this limited sense. Physical reality is interpreted as stable constraint architecture enacted within experiential occurrence. The framework draws its constraints from experimentally established quantum nonseparability and decoherence together with research programmes that model spacetime as emergent from deeper relational organisation. These constraints are used to assess leading foundational positions. Several leading positions preserve relational description yet do not fully account for the transition from formal structure to concrete manifestation. ESO proposes that this instantiation deficit can be addressed without appeal to hidden substrates, quiddities, or additional primitive laws. Within this account, physical laws function as stability constraints on experiential transition. Objects and spacetime are interpreted as dynamically stabilised organisational structures, and subjects as individuated streams of integrated experiential organisation. The hard problem of consciousness is recast as a question concerning the organisation of experiential structure under physical constraint. ESO develops the relational commitments of structural realism within an explicit ontological framework that addresses the grounding demands imposed by contemporary physics while retaining full empirical discipline.
Imperfection, Relations, and History. From Evolution to Quantum Physics and Contemporary Social Theory - The article examines a shared philosophical implication of evolutionary theory, quantum mechanics, and contemporary philosophy of science: the dissolution of an ontology grounded in enduring, self-sufficient substances. Darwin’s theory demonstrates that organisms are not realizations of a pre-given design but historically contingent compromises; quantum physics, through the problem of wave function collapse and the status of superposition, undermines the notion of particles as bearers of intrinsic, absolute properties. In dialogue with the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (Rovelli) and the materialist account of collapse (Žižek), the article advances the thesis that relationality is not merely an epistemological limitation but an ontological feature of a world, in which properties exist only within relations. This shift is situated within the broader context of 20th-century philosophy of science, which emphasized the historical and discursive conditioning of scientific categories. Imperfection, contingency, and relationality thus emerge not as anomalies but as conditions of possibility for stability, history, and meaning—both in nature as well as in society.
The quantum wave-function is at the heart of quantum mechanics. It is the physical state of a quantum system before a measurement is taken. This wave-function is described mathematically by the formulation of matrix mechanics and represents the evolution of the quantum wave-function. In contemporary philosophy of physics, the wave-function’s nature of space is hotly debated. Contemporaries such as David Albert, who posits an ontology which is based off the mathematical features of the wave-function, claim that the dimensionality of our physical space is proportional to 3N, where N is equal to the number of particles in the universe. Others such as Bradley Monton claim quantum mechanics to be a false theory from the outset due to its incompatibility with general relativity and posit a much more realist property-based-physics ontology. However, these ontologies have their problems. Albert’s ontology takes the mathematics of the quantum wave-function at face value and disregards the distance properties of metric space to misconstrue the phase space nature of the 3N-configuration space as a metric space. Monton, on the other hand, questionably grounds his thesis on the incompatibility of quantum mechanics with general relativity and on common sense rather than on observation and experimentation, as required by the scientific method. In this thesis, I discuss the viewpoints of Albert and Monton in detail and explore the nature of space in the quantum wave-function in an attempt to reach a better understanding of the fundamental nature of space in the quantum wave-function.