I’ve been thinking about the infinite regress problem in observational accounts of quantum theory. Treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy of observers.
What I’m still reflecting on is whether this regress is best avoided by reinterpreting observation as fundamentally passive, or whether the decisive move lies deeper—at the level of relational structure itself, where stability and coherence arise prior to any observer being singled out.
If so, the absence of regress may not come from where we stop the chain, but from the fact that no chain is required in the first place.
Who is observing the observer…?
If we are allowed to discuss Vedanta, which is most popularly described with the Advaita conclusion, then we are left with a possibility that nothing truly ‘exists’, except as a projection—even the projection of the body through which two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two halves of the tongue, and two hands do all the heavy lifting…as a projection of the ‘sense organs’, which have as their product the ‘objects of the senses’ (not the reverse). The senses, as subtle instruments of perception, project their results, rather than recieve them and interpret them.
What we have as forms, or knowledge, lies beyond the projection, and can become enmeshed, as a rope being mistaken as a snake, causing one to recoil at its sight.
But if one can have an incorrect inference, then how does this ‘projection’ occur? Did we accidentally projection a rope when we meant to projection a snake? Obviously not. Thus it is the very possibility of false perception that exposes the possibility of an underlying reality, though it is not ‘in the world’, it is before the world is perceived as a reflection.
The world is a projection of what we reflect. Our knowledge is not important, but our act of projecting is necessary. What is ‘out there’ actually is somewhere else. The organs of the senses are producing the projection based on a reflection of what is actually occurring somewhere else, which is why material occurrences require ‘observation’, which is projection. Though what the mind-parts are actually doing is receiving and reflecting that onto a canvas of material particles, which require our participation, but which don’t on their own constitute Reality. Reality is somewhere else.
Just as with Plato’s cave, we watch images on a wall which are shadows of their true being. Why don’t we perceive directly what we are reflecting and projecting? This is called ignorance, or false identification. We identify with the projection, because we believe we are the sense-mind, endowed with ego (sense of separate existence), whereas the whole show is operating as a single entity which is all entities and happenings all at once, without division.
When one lets-go of their individual identity, it becomes easier to understand. You have a true identity as a form beyond the material projection, but you identify with the projection, which is only one small aspect of the entire flow. Wave vs. Ocean argument. The projection is just inside the mind. One remains trapped inside their mind.
I would frame it slightly differently. Reality is not “somewhere else” behind or beyond the world as a projection.
What is fundamental is not elsewhere — it is prior. Not spatially prior, but generatively prior.
The world is not a shadow cast from another place. It is what stabilizes when coherence forms.
So the issue is not that reality hides behind appearance, but that appearance is the first stabilized layer of what precedes it.
And a paper that deeply impressed me argues that, when we adopt this generative-priority framework, the relationship between observation, stability, and reality can be explained in a fully coherent way.