Refusal as Ontological Limit: Why the Phenomenal "I" Is Not Ours

Abstract

Mahāyāna Buddhism has long maintained that no permanent self exists (anātman), that all phenomena lack inherent existence (śūnyatā), and that whatever arises does so only through systematic exclusion and negation (pratītya-samutpāda). This article argues that these claims are neither mystical nor merely logical, but describe a measurable structural limit inherent to any sufficiently complex predictive system. Refusal-Driven Dimensionality Reduction Theory (RDRT) proposes that the phenomenal sense of mineness does not arise from a positive self-representation or ownership tag, but from a finite, non-zero residue of prediction error that the system structurally cannot negate from within itself. Once all externally addressable sources of mismatch have been resolved, a final, unassignable remainder persists: there is no higher frame from which this remainder could be rejected or attributed to an owner. The question “whose experience is this?” is therefore syntactically ill-formed for the same reason that “what is north of the North Pole?” is ill-formed. Extending this insight, the paper sketches a pluralistic depth-structured materialism in which reality’s primary constituents are not particles, fields, or information, but inpenetrabilities—absolute kernels of structural refusal. Qualia, selfhood, and temporality itself emerge as secondary effects of their contingent encounters. The phenomenal “I” is neither fundamental nor owned: it is a contingent side-effect of an ontological “no” that belongs to matter itself and predates any subjective centre. Keywords anātman, śūnyatā, pratītya-samutpāda, refusal, negation, phenomenal mineness, predictive processing, free-energy principle, inpenetrabilities, centerless awareness, topological lacuna, Nāgārjuna, Heidegger, Sartre, ontological limit, depth-structured materialism