If the history of Western thought can be summarised in a single distinction, it might be this:
There is a knower and a known.A subject, and an object.An observer, and a world observed.
But what if this most fundamental of all dichotomies is not foundational at all?
What if it is not given, but enacted — through the same relational gesture we’ve traced in quantum theory, in spacetime, and in meaning?
This post takes on the subject–object divide, and shows how in a relational ontology, it is not a separation between entities, but a cut from within.
1. The Observer Is Not Outside
Quantum mechanics, more than any other theory, resists the idea of an external observer. There is no “view from nowhere” in which one can describe the world without participating in it.
Instead:
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Measurement is a cut that configures what is observed, and what is doing the observing.
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There is no subject without a relation to an object.
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And no object without being distinguished in and by that relation.
The epistemological foundation collapses: there is no pre-existing knower who confronts a pre-existing world.
There is only:
A system within a system making a distinction.
The subject is not a stable point behind the eyes. It is an enacted perspective — constituted in the very act of cutting.
2. The Object Is Not Independent
Likewise, the object is not that which simply is.
In classical metaphysics, the object is ontologically prior: it exists regardless of whether it is observed. The subject may distort it, but the thing itself persists.
But quantum experiments — and relational analysis — tell us otherwise.
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The object as such does not pre-exist its distinction.
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It is actualised in and through the system that construes it.
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Not as a fiction — but as a constrained realisation from potential.
In relational terms:
The object is not what is “out there”.It is what emerges through a cut, as the other pole of perspective.
And so, objectivity itself is redefined:
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Not freedom from perspective,
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but coherence of construal across perspectives.
3. The Subject–Object Cut
Let us now name it plainly:
The subject–object distinction is itself a cut — a relational articulation within a structured field of potential.
This cut does not divide the world between mind and matter, or inner and outer.
Rather, it configures:
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what stands as the perspective, and
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what stands as the construed.
And just like every quantum measurement, this configuration is:
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situated,
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contingent,
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and irreducibly from within.
This means the distinction between subject and object is not about what is, but about how meaning is enacted in a given context.
4. Implications for Knowing and Being
If subject and object are enacted, then so too are:
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knowledge,
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perception,
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identity,
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agency.
None of these are primary givens. Each is a relational effect — not illusions, but effects of construal with real consequences.
This reframes epistemology entirely:
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Knowing is not the alignment of mind with world.
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Knowing is an act of coordination within a system, by which one construes the other.
And it reframes ontology:
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Being is not the possession of properties.
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Being is being-participated, as an instance of relation.
5. Undoing the Myth of the Detached Observer
The detached observer was never a neutral figure.
It was a position of non-accountability, smuggled in under the guise of objectivity. It made knowledge seem universal by erasing the situatedness of the knower.
But in relational ontology, every act of knowing is an act of positioning.
There is no “outside” to step into. Every cut is made from within. Every subject is part of the field it construes.
How do we distinguish it — from where we are, as who we are, through what systems of relation?
Closing
The subject–object divide is not a metaphysical chasm, but a semiotic configuration — a perspectival articulation within a larger system.
In the next post, we’ll turn to the problem of ontology itself. If the world is not made of things, nor of properties, nor of observers and observations — what is it made of? Or better: how should we rethink “being” from a relational perspective?
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