Experiential Structural Ontology

This monograph develops and defends Experiential Structural Ontology (ESO), a metaphysical framework constrained by contemporary physics. The framework begins from a tension in contemporary physics: quantum theory replaces classical objecthood with nonseparable relational structure, and several approaches to quantum gravity reconstruct spacetime from deeper organisational relations. Structural realism captures this shift in physical description, yet it leaves open how such structure exists as a concrete world. ESO proposes that experiential manifestation provides a minimal ontological ground capable of rendering relational structure determinate as concrete occurrence. Experience is not introduced as a psychological posit. It names the mode in which relational organisation is present as determinate occurrence. Consciousness, understood as experiential manifestation, is primitive in this limited sense. Physical reality is interpreted as stable constraint architecture enacted within experiential occurrence. The framework draws its constraints from experimentally established quantum nonseparability and decoherence together with research programmes that model spacetime as emergent from deeper relational organisation. These constraints are used to assess leading foundational positions. Several leading positions preserve relational description yet do not fully account for the transition from formal structure to concrete manifestation. ESO proposes that this instantiation deficit can be addressed without appeal to hidden substrates, quiddities, or additional primitive laws. Within this account, physical laws function as stability constraints on experiential transition. Objects and spacetime are interpreted as dynamically stabilised organisational structures, and subjects as individuated streams of integrated experiential organisation. The hard problem of consciousness is recast as a question concerning the organisation of experiential structure under physical constraint. ESO develops the relational commitments of structural realism within an explicit ontological framework that addresses the grounding demands imposed by contemporary physics while retaining full empirical discipline.