Relational Actuality and the Groundless Ground: The Dzogchen View as a Research Programme in Quantum Foundations

Preprint, June 2026. Under journal submission. Also deposited at PhilSci-Archive. This paper articulates the ontology of the Tibetan Dzogchen ("Great Perfection") tradition as four precise postulates and assesses it as a Lakatosian research programme in quantum foundations. The postulates: (P1) there are no absolute observed events — actuality is relative to the systems that register it; (P2) dynamics is unitary at all scales, with classical definiteness perspectival rather than produced by observer-independent collapse; (P3) spacetime is not fundamental but emergent; (P4) the ground of phenomena is of the nature of awareness. P1–P3 admit assessment by ordinary physical standards; P4 does not and is explicitly quarantined from all evidential claims. Four open problems are identified whose resolution differentially supports or undermines P1–P3 relative to absolutist physicalism: extended Wigner's-friend tests of Local Friendliness inequalities (including the observer-ladder programme); laboratory bounds on objective-collapse models (GRW/CSL and Diósi–Penrose); the reconstruction of quantum theory from agent-centric axioms; and the derivation of spacetime from non-spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. For each, the experimental or theoretical outcome that would count against the programme is stated in advance, collected in a single refutation-conditions table reflecting the published record as of June 2026. The paper claims no derivation of new dynamics from contemplative sources and explicitly rejects quantum-consciousness hypotheses concerning brain function. Its contribution is methodological: converting a contemplative ontology into pre-stated, empirically discriminable commitments. Transparency: this work was produced through human–AI collaboration. Conception, research direction, and editorial control are the author's; execution (literature verification, derivations and their numerical checks, drafting, revision) was carried out by Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic, 2026) under the author's prompting. Full disclosure appears in the manuscript's Declarations section. The author bears sole responsibility for all claims.