There is no self-evidence: A physics of emptiness realisation

Abstract

Any system that persists must minimise surprisal, thereby gathering evidence for its own generative model, a process known as self-evidencing. However, one dimension of self-evidencing is provably impossible: evidencing the boundary that would constitute the agent as an entity separate from their environment. Recent results in quantum information theory demonstrate that no finite system can measure the entanglement entropy across its own boundary, rendering the separability of agent from environment permanently unevidenceable. Subjectively therefore, there can be no evidence for a self separate from the world. We propose that the Buddhist notion of awakening, in the sense of stable realisation of emptiness, can be understood as the embodied recognition of this impossibility. We formalise the belief in separation as a structural prior over an agent's quantum reference frame (QRF) deployments, constraining all measurement frames to respect a self/environment partition. We describe how contemplative practice progressively opacifies this constraint by developing a model of the agent's own QRF dynamics, revealing the partition as a contingent modelling choice rather than a given feature of reality. Once visible, the prior is eliminated via Bayesian model reduction resulting in a post-dual agent with unconstrained QRF deployments. We argue that such priors suppress the inherent contextuality of the boundary and that their removal constitutes a formal counterpart to the Buddhist notion of emptiness realisation. Self-evidencing may continue unimpeded after this transition, grounded in structural realism about causal regularities, while the ontological commitment to a bounded self is relinquished. We discuss empirical predictions, including altered dynamical regimes in neural systems, and the formal relationship between emptiness realisation and compassion.