The Compressed Self: Relational Neutral Monism and the Emergence of Mind and World

This essay proposes a relational interpretation of neutral monism in which both mind and world emerge from a deeper relational continuum rather than from fundamentally separate substances. Drawing on insights from relational physics and contemporary cognitive science, it argues that biological cognition necessarily compresses the overwhelming relational complexity of reality into simplified informational models that guide action. Through reflexive modeling, this compression produces a stable center of reference—a self-model—that organizes experience into the familiar subject–object structure. The apparent ontological division between the self and the world is therefore not fundamental but an adaptive cognitive partition generated by the requirements of biological survival. Understanding this architecture clarifies how the reification of the psychological self contributes to existential anxiety and the formation of rigid social structures. The essay suggests that recognizing the relational and constructed character of the self-model can loosen this reification, revealing experience as a dynamic relational process rather than a confrontation between an observing subject and an external world.