Quantum Ontology and Relativity

Steven Weinstein

Mauro Dorato

Darren Hearst

Quantum mechanics is empirically extraordinarily successful yet continues to admit a wide range of competing interpretations. While the formalism constrains probabilistic relations between preparation procedures, measurements, and outcomes, it does not uniquely determine the ontology that realises those relations. Interpretations such as Everettian quantum mechanics, Bohmian mechanics, objective collapse theories, relational quantum mechanics, and QBist approaches preserve the predictive structure of the theory while diverging sharply in their metaphysical commitments. At the same time, developments within quantum theory itself weaken the classical ontology of independently existing objects with intrinsic properties. Entanglement, violations of Bell inequalities, and decoherence theory collectively support the view that physical description is fundamentally relational. Structural realism therefore provides a natural interpretive framework, treating the mathematical structure of physical theory as ontologically primary. However, structural realism alone leaves open the question of instantiation: how relational organisation becomes concrete as a determinate world.This paper develops Experiential Structural Ontology (ESO) as a non-interventionist interpretation of quantum mechanics that addresses this problem. ESO retains the relational ontology suggested by quantum theory while proposing that relational constraint organisation is enacted as manifestation within a fundamental experiential field. On this interpretation, the wavefunction represents relational constraint architecture governing transitions within this field, measurement corresponds to the stabilisation of particular regimes within that structure, and decoherence explains the emergence of classical stability without invoking collapse dynamics or ontological branching.

Mauro Dorato, Matteo Morganti

Abstract In this paper, we evaluate some proposals that have been put forward to clarify the ontological consequences of relational quantum mechanics. We first focus on priority monism and ontic structural realism and argue that these views are not suitable for providing an ontological interpretation of the theory. Then, we discuss an alternative interpretation that we regard as more promising, based on so-called ‘metaphysical coherentism’, which we also connect to the idea of an event-based, or ‘flash’, ontology.

Hilary Putnam

Pietro Curatola

Abstract The ”Teoria della Coesistenza Relazionale” (TCR, Relational Coexistence Theory) proposes an ontological framework in which spacetime R is not the primary level of reality, but emerges from a more fundamental relational domain R′. Within this perspective, quantum and cosmological phenomena commonly treated as independent such as entanglement, decoherence, cosmic expansion, and the arrow of time are reinterpreted as different manifestations of the same underlying relational dynamics. The present work is devoted to the definition of the ontological assumptions and axiomatic structure of the TCR. In particular, it introduces the concepts of relational coexistence and emergence as the foundational elements from which physical phenomena in spacetime are derived. The aim of this study is not to provide an empirical validation of the framework, but to establish its internal coherence, conceptual consistency, and explanatory scope at the level of fundamental ontology. This work does not aim at providing a complete physical model or immediate empirical validation, but at establishing a coherent ontological and axiomatic framework within the scope of foundational physics.