Entanglement is one of the most striking and misunderstood features of quantum theory. Two particles, separated by vast distances, appear to “know” about each other’s states — such that a measurement on one instantly constrains the other.
In substance metaphysics, this seems absurd: how can one object affect another with no signal, no contact?
From a relational ontology, the question is not how distant particles communicate, but how a system actualises coherence across a cut. Entanglement is not about spooky action. It is about structural interdependence within a single field of potential.
1. The Classical Puzzle: Nonlocal Correlation
In classical terms, entanglement seems to imply:
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Hidden variables shared at the start (local realism),
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Or instantaneous influence across space (nonlocality),
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Or the abandonment of causality altogether.
Each of these reflects an attempt to force quantum phenomena into object-based assumptions: that systems are made of discrete entities with pre-existing properties and causal interactions.
But entanglement resists such framing.
2. The Relational Shift: From Objects to Coherence
Relational ontology reframes the situation:
What is “entangled” is not two things, but the structure of potential itself.
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The “particles” are not isolated substances but local actualisations within a coherent field,
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Measurement is not reading a value, but enacting a cut in that field,
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The coherence of outcomes across distant cuts reflects the systemic organisation of the whole — not influence from one part to another.
Entanglement is thus a global constraint on potential, not a local mechanism of communication.
3. No Information Travels — Because Nothing Moves
In this view:
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There is no need for signals or causal propagation between events,
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The system was never a set of separable parts — it was always a single relational configuration,
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Measurement is not a change to one element that then affects another, but a reconfiguration of perspective on a globally entangled field.
Bell inequalities are violated not because the world is nonlocal in the classical sense, but because locality is not ontologically basic.
4. The Cut as Constraint, Not Division
Entanglement also clarifies the role of the cut:
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The observer’s measurement apparatus defines a particular mode of resolution,
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That cut does not separate the world into parts; it selects a perspective on the whole,
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The correlations seen across different cuts reflect the relational constraints already present in the field.
Thus, when two measurements are made on “entangled particles,” they are not revealing linked values — they are co-construing a phenomenon from different angles within a single relational space.
5. Entanglement Without Dualism
The popular image of entanglement — particles magically connected over distance — is an artefact of dualistic thinking.
In relational terms:
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There are no separable entities with intrinsic properties,
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There is only structured potential resolving under systemic constraint,
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What we call entanglement is a global coherence becoming locally visible through specific cuts.
Entanglement is not about things being linked.It is about perspective operating on a field that was never divided to begin with.
Closing
Entanglement becomes comprehensible not through metaphysical hand-waving, but through a shift in ontology:
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From substance to relation,
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From causation to constraint,
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From parts to patterned coherence.
In the next post, we’ll extend this logic to fields and forces: What are they, in relational terms, if not carriers of substance or mediators of interaction?
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