Distributed Presence II: From Structural Ontology to Quantum Phenomena

Abstract This paper develops the second stage of the Distributed Presence (DP) programme by formulating a structural ontology in which a physical system is primitively distributed across mutually exclusive states prior to interaction. Within this non-dynamical framework, quantum superposition is not interpreted as epistemic incompleteness, a transient pre-collapse condition, or a compact representation of hidden variables. It is instead understood as the ordinary ontological mode of a system whose presence is structurally distributed over its admissible outcome space. The central methodological distinction is between determination and realisation. Determination specifies which outcomes are structurally admissible and assigns their associated presence fractions PFi, whereas realisation concerns the selection of a single outcome when an interaction imposes a one-channel constraint. No fundamental dynamical law is assumed to mediate between these two levels. Predictive content arises from structural constraints rather than from underlying equations of motion. Accordingly, randomness in DP is not epistemic; it reflects the minimality of structural specification. Presence fractions determine statistical weights, but the ontology contains no further mechanism selecting the realised outcome in an individual event. To make this ontology mathematically explicit, the paper introduces minterms: mutually exclusive signed structural configurations that provide the finest-grained specification of a system’s state-space. Minterms are not hidden variables or dynamical trajectories; they encode structural orientation information whose signed components are lost in the transition to observable, unsigned presence fractions. From this perspective, Hilbert space appears as an efficient mathematical compression of a richer mintermial structure. Quantum numbers, Pauli exclusion, and spin are consequently given structural interpretations: exclusion follows from minterm exclusivity, while spin is reconstructed as a topological closure property of signed structural patterns rather than as primitive angular momentum. The framework is then extended to structural energetics. DP addresses the apparent tension between the classical dependence of energy on amplitude and the quantum dependence of energy on frequency by deriving both from a deeper law of normalized presence distribution. The Planck–Einstein relation E=hf emerges as a geometric consequence of modal compression under fixed normalization, supporting a structural account of discrete energy transfer, including the photoelectric effect. Finally, the reconstructive scope of DP is illustrated through structural treatments of Born weights, interference, Bell non-factorizability, the Tsirelson bound, and selected spectral regularities. The aim is not to replace quantum mechanics, but to clarify its ontological and structural foundations.