The separability of agent from environment is permanently unevidenceable.

Consequence of the no-self-measurement result; the boundary cannot be empirically established.

Source paper

extracted_from

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

(2026) · Lars Sandved-Smith · Chris Fields · Thomas Doctor · Ruben Laukkonen +1

Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count

Papers (1)

paper

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

Findings (1)

finding

No finite system A can measure the entanglement entropy S(|AB>) across the boundary B that separates it from its environment B (Fields & Glazebrook 2023, Corollary 3.1)
supports
The core impossibility result imported from quantum information theory; basis of the entire argument

Claims (2)

claim

Subjectively, there can be no evidence for a self separate from the world.
extends
Translates the formal impossibility into phenomenological terms.
Evidencing the boundary that would constitute the agent as an entity separate from their environment is provably impossible.
extends
Central thesis: the self-environment cut cannot be self-evidencing.

Related by similarity (8)

cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edge

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

separability of agent and environmentconcept0.906
The idea that the agent can be distinguished as an entity separate from its environment.
Can a finite agent obtain evidence that it is separable from its environment?question0.849
The central question the paper answers negatively via quantum information theory
No finite agent can obtain evidence for its own separability from its environmentclaim0.838
Core claim of the paper; derives from Corollary 3.1 of Fields & Glazebrook (2023)
There are no permanent or indivisible agents; the actual nonexistence of singular and enduring individuality must be accounted for in any model of agency.claim0.803
Fundamental ontological claim underlying the selfless self model.
No finite system can measure the entanglement entropy across its own boundary, rendering the separability of agent from environment permanently unevidenceable.claim0.791
Prior result from quantum information theory cited as evidence.
The boundary between agent and environment is not a physical object discovered in the world but a modelling choiceclaim0.785
Established via Zanardi (2002) and the Hamiltonian decomposition argument in §2.1; foundational for the emptiness formalisation
agent-environment boundaryconcept0.769
The demarcation that would separate an agent from its environment, which the paper argues is unevidenceable.
One dimension of self-evidencing is provably impossible: evidencing the boundary that would constitute the agent as an entity separate from their environment.claim0.769
Central thesis of the paper.