Physics is Descriptive, not Ontological
And why that is all we need
There is a critical distinction between describing a thing and encountering its reality. A description of the Eiffel Tower, no matter how detailed, is not equivalent to standing before it.
To speak of a “gulf” between a description and reality is misleading. The term suggests that this gap could be reduced with more detail, as if reality could be approached through description alone. But this is a category error. A description, regardless of its precision, can never become the thing itself.
No matter how exhaustive a written description of fire may be, it will not cause the paper it’s written on to combust. The description is fundamentally of a different category than the reality it describes. Saying there’s no gulf isn’t to suggest zero distance; it’s to assert that measuring their difference as a “distance” is itself incoherent.
Why Distinguish Descriptions from Reality?
This distinction mirrors the difference between information and medium. Information captures patterns and relationships — the organization of elements within a system — but not the medium that embodies them. A description of a helicopter on paper conveys no physical helicopter. The paper contains information; the helicopter is a physical structure composed of a different medium.
Moreover, information is medium-independent. The same sentence can be rendered in ink, carved into stone, or displayed on a screen. The medium changes; the information remains. What’s preserved are the abstract patterns — symbol shapes, syntactic order, and relational structure.
This is precisely why simulations are possible. A digital simulation of ants is not made of biological matter, but it replicates the behavioral relationships of real ants. The medium differs; the information is preserved.
Language works in this way: it encodes structure and relationships using symbolic patterns. These patterns can be analogically matched to those of real-world phenomena. All descriptions are analogies — the medium differs, but the structural relationships remain. A description of a helicopter mirrors the structure of the real helicopter, not in substance, but in the relationships it depicts.
When reading, some symbols denote familiar concepts (“cat”, “car”), while others express relationships (“on top of”). The author assumes the reader already possesses the concepts and uses them to reconstruct an internal simulation of what is being described. Like assembling IKEA furniture, where the manual doesn’t supply the parts but tells you how to arrange them, reading involves arranging mental representations according to relational cues in the text.
Conceptual Regress
But what are these concepts? Are they themselves descriptions? If so, this threatens to regress infinitely — defining each term in terms of others.
To halt this regress, some concepts must bottom out in raw experience — mediums that are directly perceived, not described. The reality of a thing must ultimately be experienced. Description abstracts away from this. As with the Eiffel Tower, no account replaces direct observation.
If I have seen an elephant and the color pink, I can mentally simulate a pink elephant, even if I’ve never seen one. I recombine memories — raw experiential mediums — using described relationships. Even without having seen an elephant, I could simulate it by combining features I do recognize: legs, tusks, trunk, grayness. These combinations rest on real, remembered experiences.
Memories themselves are physical — they are the brain at work. Not just the organization of neurons and their connections, but the dynamic propagation of signals — these constitute memory as a medium. When interpreting a description, we physically restructure our brains, activating or altering memories to conform to new patterns.
Without memory — without raw experiential content — we are trapped in definitional recursion. Understanding halts when we run out of definitions grounded in experience. At some point, we must stop and take Wittgenstein’s advice: “don’t think, look!”
If someone raised in complete darkness reads a description of color, they cannot understand it unless the terms are broken down into concepts they’ve experienced. Alternatively, they can be brought into the light and shown colors directly — providing them with irreducible experiential referents.
The Physical Perspective
In What is it Like to Be a Bat?, Thomas Nagel argues that physical reality is point-of-view independent, whereas experience is point-of-view dependent. From this, he concludes that perception cannot be part of physical reality — it must be something extra, something subjective and unique to conscious beings. But this conclusion is built upon a flawed assumption: that there exists a truly point-of-view independent physical reality.
In fact, physical reality — as modeled by the sciences — is deeply dependent on perspective. Every physical prediction depends on the chosen frame of reference. Consider a person sitting on a train and another sitting on a bench watching the train pass. Both observe the same object but assign it different velocities. Velocity is not an illusion or a subjective opinion; it’s an objective, measurable property — but one that is context-dependent. It cannot be defined independently of a frame of reference. To treat velocity as a real, physical property means accepting that physical reality is contextually defined, not universally fixed.
This contextuality runs even deeper in special relativity. Here, even causality is limited by the speed of light. Imagine a king dies and, in that instant, his son becomes king. He sends a message to another galaxy declaring his coronation, but the message will not arrive for millions of years. It might seem intuitive to think that the truth of his kingship holds universally from the moment of the old king’s death, but this presumes an absolute simultaneity — a notion explicitly denied by Minkowski spacetime.
In special relativity, simultaneity is relative. There is no physical foliation of spacetime that universally orders events. What one observer perceives as simultaneous, another might not. Thus, the very ontology of reality — what is real — is perspective-dependent. There is no “reality as a whole” that contains all events from all perspectives simultaneously. Reality is fragmented; it lacks global completeness. Ontology itself differs between frames of reference.
Despite this fragmentation, shared reality emerges where physical systems interact. Minkowski spacetime ensures that causally connected systems will agree on the order of those interactions. This agreement anchors physical reality: it doesn’t unify all perspectives, but it synchronizes overlapping ones where causal contact occurs. Where causal contact doesn’t occur, perspective-dependent fragmentation remains.
Quantum mechanics reinforces this principle in the Wigner’s friend paradox. Suppose Wigner’s friend measures a particle and observes a definite outcome. From her point of view, the wave function collapses. But Wigner, who has not yet interacted with the system, still describes the entire setup — including his friend — as being in a superposed entangled state.
This leads some, influenced by Nagel or Kant, to claim quantum mechanics is subjective or that it depends on consciousness. They propose “objective” collapse models or pilot-wave theories to recover an observer-independent picture. But these models commit the same mistake as Nagel — they try to force a perspective-independent ontology onto a theory that is explicitly contextual.
Quantum mechanics does not imply subjectivity or consciousness-dependence. The wave function’s collapse is not a psychological event — it is an objective, physical occurrence that is context-dependent. Wigner’s friend sees the particle in a definite state because she interacted with it. Wigner, who hasn’t, does not. Both are objectively correct within their respective contexts. The ontology of the system — the state of what is real — depends on the physical frame of reference. Reality is contextual, not subjective.
Descriptive Perspectives vs. Real Perspectives
One common objection arises here: even if physical descriptions are perspective-dependent, isn’t there still a gap between what such a description entails and what an observer actually experiences? A mathematical description of a frame of reference doesn’t feel like the same thing as being in that frame. So, it’s claimed, the physical description is incomplete — it misses the qualitative, experiential reality.
This is where we return to the fundamental distinction discussed at the outset. Yes, the physical description is incomplete in one crucial way: it is, indeed, merely a description. It captures the informational structure of a perspective but not the reality of that perspective. Mathematics is a kind of language, and like all languages, it traffics in descriptions, not in the thing itself.
The difference between what an observer perceives and what physics predicts they will perceive is the same as the difference between reading about the Eiffel Tower and standing beneath it. One is informational; the other is ontological. The mathematical description predicts what a person will report experiencing, but this prediction is not itself the experience — it is a representation of its informational content.
This is the true resolution of what philosophers call the “explanatory gap” — the alleged inability of physical science to account for experience. Thinkers like David Chalmers assert that the sciences must explain how descriptions give rise to perceptions. But this demand is misplaced. It assumes that language, properly arranged, should cause the thing it describes to exist — a logical category error.
It is no different from demanding that a description of fire be so detailed that the paper it’s written on ignites. The request is incoherent not because it’s unfeasibly difficult, but because it conflates description with being. Descriptions, no matter how intricate, do not generate reality; they refer to it. The failure of description to become experience is not a mystery — it is a consequence of what description is.
Perspectives Are Always of a Thing
Physics, as practiced, is unavoidably perspective-dependent. Every prediction must specify a frame of reference — a perspective. And for that frame to be meaningful, it must be tied to a physical object. In quantum theory, this is a requirement for consistency. In relativity, frames are often specified by coordinate systems, but those coordinates are only meaningful if an object occupies them. You can only make a measurement from somewhere physical.
If you tie a sensor to a rock and send it downstream, the data you retrieve is data from the rock’s frame. There is no abstract measurement from nowhere — coordinates must be inhabited. A reference frame without an object to occupy it is a mathematical fiction. It describes what would be perceived if an object were there. But unless something is actually present, that perspective is unrealized potential.
This is the same mistake often made in quantum mechanics when people reify the wave function — as if the state vector were a literal, physical entity. But it is not. It encodes potential outcomes, probabilities conditional on observations that might occur. If no observation occurs, the wave function’s content has no realized ontological status. Predicting the behavior of an unflipped coin is not a claim about reality unless the coin is actually flipped. Similarly, quantum probabilities have no reality unless the measurement they predict actually happens.
To speak of the wave function as if it describes something real before any observation is to drift into metaphysics — claiming physical status for unobservable entities. This misstep happens when we mistake the map for the territory, the mathematical structure for the reality it models. But these structures only describe relationships between real events, and those events are always grounded in perspective, in real objects.
The Reality of All Perspectives
If physical science can describe any perspective associated with any physical object, and if we take its descriptive power seriously, then we must also take seriously the corresponding reality implied by each of those perspectives.
Both relativity and quantum theory allow us to model reality from the frame of reference of any physical object — human or otherwise. These are not just abstract tools. They encode what would be observed or measured by that object, if it were observing. And if these descriptions are valid, then they must be describing something that exists. That is, if the description from the perspective of a rock is valid in the same way as the description from the perspective of a human, then there must be something it is like, ontologically, to be that rock.
This conclusion is often rejected out of hand as absurd, primarily due to entrenched intuitions inherited from Nagel and Kant. According to these views, “perspective” is bound up with subjectivity and consciousness. To say there is a perspective for a rock sounds like saying the rock is conscious. But that’s a misinterpretation. No such claim is being made.
To say there is something it is like to be a rock is not to say that the rock is self-aware, or capable of introspection, or possesses thoughts or feelings. It is only to say that there is a corresponding ontological reality to the physical description we can write down when taking the rock’s perspective as our reference frame. The rock does not know what it is like to be itself — it has no cognitive machinery to reflect — but its perspective still exists, and is real.
We can even observe the consequences of this reality. Strap a GoPro to a rock and let it float downstream. Later, review the footage. The footage shows a continuous visual perspective from the rock’s frame. That perspective must have existed for the footage to exist. If the perspective were not real, there would be no coherent recording. The camera recorded something. That something was the rock’s point of view.
To deny that a rock’s perspective has ontological reality while affirming a human’s does not stand on scientific grounds. It introduces an arbitrary distinction unsupported by the physical framework. More than that, it leads to epistemic collapse: if one rejects the rock’s perspective on the grounds that we cannot access it directly, then the same argument applies to other humans. I cannot access your perspective. If inaccessible perspectives are unreal, then your reality is as uncertain as the rock’s. The only consistent endpoint of that argument is solipsism.
This leads to an important clarification: perspectives are always bound to physical objects. To occupy another object’s perspective would require becoming that object, sharing its physical properties. But in doing so, you cease to be yourself. You do not gain access to its perspective as you — you are replaced by it. The impossibility of accessing another perspective is not a mystery; it’s definitional. You cannot be two physical objects at once.
So when we say there is something it is like to be a rock, we are not talking about introspective experience, or consciousness in the psychological sense. We are talking about the ontological fact that there is a real world from that reference frame — a world that can be described, predicted, and whose properties follow the laws of physics. That is all that “being” means in this context.
Even our everyday language reflects this broader, less anthropocentric notion of experience. We speak of objects “experiencing” temperature changes or “experiencing” pressure. We say the heat shield is experiencing reentry. No one interprets this to mean that the heat shield has thoughts or feelings. To experience, in this physical sense, is simply to undergo change, to be affected.
First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives
Many philosophers attempt to draw a sharp line between “first-person” and “third-person” perspectives. They often claim that third-person perspectives — those from which we describe systems externally — are more “fundamental,” while first-person perspectives are subjective overlays, bound up with personal experience or consciousness.
But this distinction is deeply confused.
First-person and third-person perspectives are both types of perspectives. The only difference is structural: a first-person perspective refers to a system containing a single object, while a third-person perspective involves a description of multiple systems interacting, possibly observed from a point external to all of them.
Crucially, a third-person perspective can itself be the perspective of a person. That is, one person can describe the interaction between two other people. This doesn’t somehow remove perspective-dependence from the description; it simply shifts the reference frame. There’s no qualitative shift in the nature of reality between first- and third-person views. What differs is content, not kind.
To say that third-person perspectives are more “objective” or “fundamental” is to smuggle in Kantian or Nagelian assumptions through the back door. What those philosophers are really trying to express is not a genuine difference between “first” and “third” persons, but the notion of a perspective-independent world. They use “third-person” as a stand-in for “view from nowhere” — a concept that doesn’t actually make sense in physical theory.
In physics, there is no view from nowhere. All descriptions require a frame of reference. The idea of a perspective-independent reality — something that just “is,” without relation to any observing system — is not found anywhere in physical practice. There is no experiment, no prediction, no measurement that can be made without specifying a frame.
And if there is no privileged view from nowhere, then there is no privileged “third-person” perspective either. There are only perspectives — each corresponding to a physical object — and they are all equally real.
The attempt to treat “third-person” descriptions as more fundamental is often just a rhetorical strategy to dismiss what cannot be accessed externally. But if we are honest about what physics tells us, we must accept that reality consists of many perspectives, each as valid and ontologically real as the others. There is no master narrative, no single universal ontology in which all perspectives are harmoniously embedded. Reality is not a single coherent block; it is contextually defined, fragmented, and stitched together only where physical interaction allows.
This is not a limitation of physics. It is one of its deepest insights. The world is not waiting behind the curtain of perception to be finally revealed in its entirety. There is no final curtain. There are only interacting parts, described from within, never from beyond.
