Brian Capleton

The Emergence of Objectivity

Preamble:
The VGF is an attractor landscape - the infinite field of coupled and nested closures resulting from the infinite iteration principle. The VGF is an alternative way of modelling structure between distinctions, that constantly evolves under the iterative generativity through the process of VGF decoherence. The concept of VGF decoherence can be applied to both quantum decoherence and ongoing evolution in the classical world.

Q:

It is the case, is it not, that in the VGF in the scientific register, we are saying that there are two kinds of objectivity that emerge, both based on the principle of redundancy. The first is spacetime, and the second is quantum derived objectivity, or QDO, which results from quantum decoherence. Can you throw some more light on this please?

A:

    Two Forms of Objectivity in the VGF

    Two Forms of Objectivity in the VGF

    Yes. In the scientific register of the VGF, the first of these is a VGF interpretation of cosmological and physical structure, whereas the second has a much more direct counterpart in established decoherence theory and quantum Darwinism.

    We could call them:

    1. Spacetime Objectivity (STO) — the objectivity of the arena and structural relations.
    2. Quantum-Derived Objectivity (QDO) — the objectivity of particular states, properties, events and objects within that arena.

    They are related because both arise through redundant stabilisation, but they occur at quite different depths of the VGF hierarchy.

    1. Spacetime Objectivity: the First Objective Closure

    On the VGF account, the earliest physical problem is not:

    What state is this object in?

    but something considerably more fundamental:

    What counts as a persistent distinction, location, relation, neighbourhood or causal separation at all?

    Before the spacetime closure, there is, in our VGF representation, no already-existing classical container in which physical things are sitting. There is the generative VGF and its possible relational structures.

    The first great physical stabilisation cascade therefore has to produce something like:

    \[ \text{generative relational multiplicity} \longrightarrow \text{redundant relational structure} \longrightarrow \text{persistent locality} \longrightarrow \text{spacetime}. \]

    The crucial VGF move is that a relation becomes objective when it is not merely represented once, but is supported redundantly throughout the evolving structure.

    Thus, for example, the fact that two events have a particular causal or spatial relationship is not dependent upon one isolated interaction. It is woven into innumerable mutually compatible relations.

    Spacetime therefore becomes extraordinarily stable because it is enormously redundant.

    This is a deeper form of objectivity than the ordinary objectivity of a chair, electron detector reading, or planet.

    It establishes the conditions under which later objective facts can exist.

    \[ \boxed{\text{constitutive objectivity}} \]

    We can call this constitutive objectivity because it constitutes the objective physical domain itself.

    2. Quantum-Derived Objectivity: Objectivity Arising Within Spacetime

    Once the spacetime closure has stabilised, something different can happen.

    Quantum systems interact with surrounding systems:

    \[ S + E \longrightarrow SE. \]

    Through decoherence, particular states — approximately the pointer states — become robust under environmental interaction.

    But decoherence by itself does not yet fully explain why a property becomes publicly objective.

    Quantum Darwinism adds the crucial principle of redundancy.

    Information about the same pointer state becomes copied into many effectively independent environmental fragments:

    \[ S \longrightarrow E_1,E_2,E_3,\ldots,E_N. \]

    Schematically:

    \[ |s_i\rangle \longrightarrow |s_i\rangle |E_i^{(1)}\rangle |E_i^{(2)}\rangle \cdots |E_i^{(N)}\rangle . \]

    An observer does not usually interact directly with the system. They intercept one fragment of its environment — commonly photons.

    Another observer intercepts another fragment.

    If both fragments contain effectively the same information, both observers infer that the same object possesses the same stable property.

    Hence:

    \[ \text{redundancy} \longrightarrow \text{independent accessibility} \longrightarrow \text{intersubjective agreement} \longrightarrow \text{objective fact}. \]

    That is what we are calling Quantum-Derived Objectivity.

    So QDO is something like:

    \[ \boxed{\text{epistemically accessible physical objectivity}} \]

    or, perhaps more strongly:

    \[ \boxed{\text{broadcast objectivity}}. \]

    3. The Important Difference Between the Two

    The distinction can be stated very compactly.

    Spacetime objectivity says:

    There is a stable public structure of relations.

    Quantum-Derived Objectivity says:

    Within that stable structure, particular physical alternatives become stable public facts.

    Or:

    \[ \boxed{ \text{STO gives us the objective stage;} \qquad \text{QDO gives us objective happenings on the stage.} } \]

    The theatrical metaphor should not be pushed too far, however, because spacetime itself remains, in the VGF, a dynamically maintained closure rather than an independently existing container.

    4. Two Applications of the Same VGF Principle

    This is where the distinction becomes particularly interesting.

    At first sight spacetime emergence and quantum decoherence seem to be entirely different problems.

    But in the VGF they become two levels of one mechanism:

    \[ \text{variation/coherence} \longrightarrow \text{interaction} \longrightarrow \text{redundancy} \longrightarrow \text{stable closure} \longrightarrow \text{objectivity}. \]

    At the first level:

    \[ \text{VGF relational possibilities} \longrightarrow \boxed{\text{spacetime objectivity}}. \]

    At the second:

    \[ \text{quantum alternatives} \longrightarrow \boxed{\text{QDO}}. \]

    So there is a recursive structure:

    \[ \boxed{ \text{Objectivity}_{n+1} \text{ is stabilised within } \text{Objectivity}_{n}. } \]

    Spacetime is therefore not simply another QDO outcome. It is the closure within which QDO becomes possible.

    5. The Stability–Fidelity Law Operates at Both Levels

    This gives us another striking parallel.

    At the spacetime level, enormous stability is obtained by sacrificing fidelity to the deeper generative multiplicity from which the spacetime structure emerged.

    Thus:

    \[ \text{VGF generative richness} \longrightarrow \text{stable spacetime}. \]

    At the quantum level:

    \[ \sum_i c_i |s_i\rangle \longrightarrow \text{stable pointer-sector information}. \]

    The final environmental record carries extraordinarily robust information such as the fact that a pointer is here rather than there, while practical access to the phase relationships encoded in the antecedent coherent state is lost.

    Thus both obey the Stability–Fidelity pattern:

    \[ \boxed{ \text{increasing redundancy} \Rightarrow \text{increasing stability} \Rightarrow \text{decreasing fidelity to the antecedent coherence}. } \]

    The difference is simply the level of coherence being stabilised away.

    6. A Hierarchy of Objectivity

    The resulting picture can be represented as follows:

    \[ \text{IIP} \]
    \[ \downarrow \]
    \[ \text{VGF generative relational field} \]
    \[ \downarrow \qquad \text{redundant stabilisation} \]
    \[ \boxed{\text{SPACETIME OBJECTIVITY}} \]
    \[ \downarrow \]
    \[ \text{quantum fields / systems / interactions} \]
    \[ \downarrow \qquad \text{decoherence + redundant environmental recording} \]
    \[ \boxed{\text{QUANTUM-DERIVED OBJECTIVITY}} \]
    \[ \downarrow \]
    \[ \text{classical objects, events and records} \]
    \[ \downarrow \]
    \[ \text{biological and cognitive observers} \]
    \[ \downarrow \]
    \[ \text{symbolically articulated scientific objectivity}. \]

    7. Nested Gamma Stabilisations

    This reveals something important about the VGF conception of the gamma domain.

    Gamma is not produced only once.

    There are nested gamma stabilisations.

    Spacetime is an extremely deep gamma closure. QDO produces further gamma closures inside it. Molecules, planets, organisms, measuring instruments, written records and scientific institutions subsequently form still higher-order redundant stabilisations.

    So rather than:

    \[ \beta \longrightarrow \gamma \]

    happening only once, the universe contains something more like:

    \[ \beta_0 \longrightarrow \gamma_0 \longrightarrow \beta_1 \longrightarrow \gamma_1 \longrightarrow \beta_2 \longrightarrow \gamma_2 \longrightarrow \cdots \]

    Each successful \(\gamma_n\) becomes part of the stable environment within which a new field of \(\beta_{n+1}\) possibilities can arise.

    That is very close to the principle we have been developing of closure supporting constrained reopening.

    8. QDO as a Local Replay of the Deeper Stabilisation Principle

    A particularly interesting consequence follows.

    The two forms of objectivity are not merely analogous.

    QDO may be regarded as a local replay of the deeper principle by which spacetime objectivity itself arose.

    In both cases the VGF turns something that is relationally richer, less definite and less independently accessible into something that is highly redundant, mutually confirmable and stable.

    We could therefore formulate a fairly strong VGF proposition:

    Objectivity is the phenomenology, from within an evolved closure, of sufficiently redundant stabilisation.

    In the scientific register, however, we should remove the phenomenological language and formulate the proposition more cautiously:

    Physical objectivity is the condition produced when a stabilised structure is redundantly instantiated or recorded sufficiently widely that its existence no longer depends upon any particular interaction or observer.

    Spacetime objectivity and Quantum-Derived Objectivity are therefore two depths of the same principle: spacetime is the redundancy-stabilised objectivity of physical relational structure, while QDO is the redundancy-stabilised objectivity of particular physical alternatives within that structure.

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