Entanglement as Indivisibility of Construal

Entanglement is often hailed as the most “quantum” of quantum phenomena — the place where our intuitions go to die.

Two particles, it is said, become mysteriously linked: measure one, and the other “knows” instantly, no matter how far apart they are. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.”

But all of this presumes the very categories that entanglement undermines.

It treats particles as distinct individuals with separate properties — and then wonders why they refuse to behave.

In relational ontology, we approach entanglement differently.

We see it not as a mysterious connection between already-separated parts, but as a cut that never happened.

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1. Entanglement is Not a Link

The language of connection, transmission, and influence is already a projection.

• To speak of two particles being “connected” presumes they are two.

• To speak of one “influencing” the other presumes they have separate states.

• To wonder about “instantaneous effects” presumes a background of space and time through which causality flows.

But in quantum theory, entangled systems are not composed of parts.

They are co-instantiated wholes.

What we call “particles” are not individuals with localised properties.

They are relational construals within a shared act of instantiation.

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2. No Cut, No Parts

Entanglement reflects a situation where no perspectival separation — no cut — has been made between the elements.

The “system” is not yet divided into observer and observed, this and that, here and there.

To measure one part is not to cause a change in the other.

It is to enact a cut that constitutes the relational configuration — including what is seen as “this” and “that” in the first place.

Hence, the measurement does not reveal an existing state.

It actualises a relational event.

There is no spooky transmission. There is no hidden signal.

There is only a single construal, enacted from a specific perspective.

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3. Entanglement is the Default

We tend to imagine entanglement as a special, fragile, exotic thing.

In fact, it is the default mode of being in a relational world.

Individuation — the appearance of separable objects with determinate properties — only emerges through the cut.

So where no cut has been made, entanglement remains.

It is not something that happens.

It is something that has not been undone.

This is why decoherence — the apparent emergence of classicality — is not a process of loss, but of perspectival narrowing.

It is not that the world becomes classical.

It is that we enact a cut in which classical distinctions appear.

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4. A Universe Without Parts

In relational ontology, the very idea of a system composed of separable parts is a secondary construal — a derivative abstraction.

Entanglement shows us what happens when that abstraction fails.

But instead of treating that as a problem, we treat it as a revelation:

• There are no parts until we cut them out.

• There are no properties until we construe them.

• And there are no connections, because there is nothing to connect — only a single act of meaning that has not been partitioned.

Entanglement, then, is not a puzzle.

It is a reminder that the world, as such, is not made of things.

It is made of relevance within perspective.

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Closing

The paradoxes of entanglement dissolve when we abandon the myth of independent parts with intrinsic properties.

What remains is not a spooky mystery, but a radical simplicity:

• A world not built from pieces,

• But enacted through cuts.

In the next post, we’ll revisit the idea of probability in quantum theory — and ask what it means to speak of chance in a world that isn’t made of fixed outcomes.