Embedded Process: Finite Disclosure, Conditioned Cuts, and the Non-Collapse of Structural and Experiential Adequacy

David T. Swanson · 2026

Abstract

Many contemporary disputes about mind, experience, science, and institutions are distorted by a false choice: either reality is ontologically one and a sufficiently structural description should eventually capture everything that matters, or experience, agency, and lived significance force some form of dualism, bifurcation, or two-aspect metaphysics. This paper argues that the choice is false. Reality is ontologically one, and for finite embedded beings such as ourselves it is most adequately disclosed under processual rather than static terms. Finite disclosure always proceeds through conditioned cuts shaped by standpoint, interface, level, purpose, and finitude, and these cuts jointly generate disclosure and residue. In some domains—specifically subject-process domains—no single finite cut can be presumed to preserve both structural organization and lived significance without loss. Structural adequacy and experiential adequacy therefore function as jointly necessary but non-collapsible lower bounds of adequate disclosure, without implying any bifurcation of being. The paper's central claim is not merely that experience matters, nor merely that all knowing is situated, but that finite disclosure itself generates non-collapsible adequacy conditions where lived significance is constitutively relevant to what must be adequately disclosed. The paper develops this framework, situates it against reductive monism, dualist and bifurcation views, process ontology, and situated knowledge, and shows how it clarifies questions in philosophy of mind, institutional representation, and model-mediated judgment, while leaving open whether a radically non-embedded rendering might represent the same reality differently.

Citation

@misc{Swanson2026EmbeddedProcess,
  author       = {Swanson, David T.},
  title        = {Embedded Process: Finite Disclosure, Conditioned Cuts, and the Non-Collapse of Structural and Experiential Adequacy},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.19042695},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19042695}
}