Metaphysics Grounded In Epistemic Infallibilism
By Matt Watt
Introduction
This paper develops a metaphysical system grounded in a strict epistemic foundation. Adopting the principle of epistemic infallibilism, I define knowledge as that which cannot possibly be false. From this starting point, I argue that only one belief survives radical doubt: the belief that I exist. Descartes arrives at the same conclusion but uses it as a launchpad for further justification—appealing to God, the external world, and the reliability of reason. I take a different approach. I treat this single certainty not as a beginning to be surpassed, but as the foundation upon which everything else must depend. The result is a complete metaphysical system constructed from one infallible truth: that I exist.
The referent of “I” in this context is not a body, a thinker, or a person in the empirical sense, but the pure subject of experience. No belief about other subjects, minds, or consciousnesses can meet the infallibilist standard. Thus, I argue that according to the standard of infallibilism, exactly one subject is known to exist. From this epistemic certainty we derive the fundamental metaphysical axiom of Subjective Monism, around which a complete metaphysics will be constructed: exactly one subject exists—simplified to I = 1.
Subjective Monism holds that reality is fundamentally structured by the experience of a single subject of experience. This single subject experiences reality from the perspective of all conscious beings, one at a time, across a deterministic and cyclical universe. Each cycle of the cosmos recurs identically, and the subject experiences a different conscious life with each recurrence. The appearance of many subjects is explained by the fact that all other minds are akin to philosophical zombies: they behave as if they are conscious, but possess no subjective experience.
This paper proceeds in three parts. Part I establishes the epistemic foundation of the system by applying the standard of infallibilism and demonstrating that only one belief qualifies as knowledge: that I exist. From this, it derives the metaphysical axiom I = 1, asserting the ontological claim that exactly one subject of experience exists. Part II constructs the metaphysical system around the axiom I = 1 by introducing the Subjective Recurrence Model in which a single subject experiences every conscious life sequentially within a deterministic, cyclical universe. Part III explores the philosophical consequences of Subjective Monism, focusing on how it reframes the Hard Problem of Consciousness, answers the question of personal identity, and dissolves the problem of other minds.
The aim is not to speculate beyond reason, but to trace a path from radical certainty to a minimal and coherent ontology. By grounding metaphysics in what cannot be doubted, Subjective Monism offers an alternative to both physicalist pluralism and solipsistic retreat—one that treats consciousness not as a mystery, but as the key to understanding the structure of reality.
Part I: The Foundation
We begin with a single methodological commitment: epistemic infallibilism. This principle holds that a belief counts as knowledge if and only if it is infallibly certain—that is, it cannot possibly be false. Following this method, we discard all beliefs that can be doubted. The external world, other minds, the past, memory, perception, even logic—all can be subjected to skeptical doubt. But one belief remains immune: I exist. Even in the act of doubting, something is present that experiences the doubt. This insight is not based on inference or observation but is immediate, self-validating, and indubitable. As Descartes wrote: “Cogito, ergo sum”—though here we discard the dependency on “thinking” and retain only the minimal content: I am.
What, then, is the referent of “I”? It cannot be a body, which is known only through sense perception. It cannot be a personality or memory, as these are susceptible to illusion. It cannot even be a thinker, in the Cartesian sense, since the act of thinking might itself be an illusion. The only element that remains invulnerable to doubt is the existence of a subject of experience—a bare first-personal presence.
Nothing can be affirmed about the subject beyond its immediate presence in experience. But one thing is certain: one subject exists—because that is what it means for me to know anything at all. If I am certain that I exist, and this “I” refers only to the subject of experience, then I am certain that exactly one subject exists. This represents a formal epistemic conclusion:
Exactly one subject is known with certainty to exist.
No other subject can be known with certainty. The existence of other minds, while widely believed, cannot meet the infallibilist standard. To assert their existence would be to assert something that might be false—and thus not knowledge.
This marks the transition from epistemology to metaphysics. The certainty that one subject exists is not merely the limit of what can be known—it is an ideal and secure starting point for constructing a metaphysical system. Here, I adopt a strict principle: metaphysics must begin from what cannot possibly be false. The existence of a single subject of experience meets this standard. I therefore elevate this certainty to an ontological claim: that one and only one subject exists. The existence of other subjects is not rejected arbitrarily, but excluded on principle, since it cannot be established without appeal to uncertain assumptions. This is the core commitment of Subjective Monism. From it follows the fundamental axiom of the system:
I = 1 — Only one subject exists.
Everything that follows begins here.
Part II: The Metaphysics
To reflect the truth of I = 1, we must imagine a universe in which the appearance of many minds does not imply their metaphysical reality. The Subjective Recurrence Model provides such a framework. It holds that the one subject experiences the lives of all conscious beings sequentially, across identical cosmic cycles. In each cycle, every event unfolds exactly as it did before—each action, sensation, and thought occurs in the same order and form. The structure of the universe does not change; only the perspective through which it is experienced does.
From the outside, it appears as though many conscious beings exist simultaneously. In every cycle—A, B, C, and so on—the same individuals, such as Person X, Person Y, and Person Z, all appear and behave identically. They are born, live their lives, and die in exactly the same ways across each cycle. What changes is not the world or the beings in it, but which of these lives is being experienced by the subject. In cycle A, the subject experiences the life of Person X. In cycle B, the subject experiences the life of Person Y. In cycle C, the subject experiences Person Z. From the perspective of the subject, only one experience ever occurs at a time. Over infinite recurrence, the subject experiences every possible conscious life, one at a time, again and again.
Although many beings appear to be conscious within a given cycle, only one of them is actually experienced by the subject. Each behaves as if it possesses consciousness, but only one life is lived from the inside. The rest are best described as philosophical zombies—indistinguishable in behavior from conscious beings, yet lacking a true subjective experience.
Because the subject has no continuity of perspective between lives, the transition from one life to another is instant from the inside. There is no sense of time passing between deaths and subsequent births—only the immediate onset of a new perspective. From the subject’s point of view, there is never a break in first-person experience, only a seamless succession of lived perspectives. As the cycle repeats infinitely, I = 1 is not just a metaphysical axiom, but an eternal phenomenological constant: the truth that one subject exists is always, and only ever, true.
With the Subjective Recurrence Model in place, Subjective Monism reveals itself as a form of absolute subjective idealism. It is subjective because all of reality exists within the experience of a single subject. It is absolute because this subject is not one among many, but the only one—eternally present across all conscious lives, one at a time. The world, in this framework, is not something outside experience but something entirely structured within it. Space, time, bodies, and the appearance of other minds are not independent entities but patterns within the subject’s field of awareness. In grounding reality in a single, undivided stream of experience, the theory affirms the core idealist claim: that experience is not part of reality—it is reality.
This completes the metaphysical picture. What remains is to examine the consequences.
Part III: The Implications
One of the central challenges in contemporary philosophy of mind is what David Chalmers has termed the Hard Problem of Consciousness. It asks: why should any physical or functional process be accompanied by subjective awareness? From the outside, organisms behave, respond, and process information—but from the inside, there is something it is like to be them. Explaining this inner dimension of experience—what some philosophers call qualia—has proven notoriously difficult. There appears to be an explanatory gap between objective accounts of cognition and the first-person reality of consciousness.
Subjective Monism does not solve the hard problem in the conventional sense—it dissolves it by rejecting the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to the problem. The hard problem presupposes that consciousness is something to be explained in terms of something more fundamental, such as brain states or information processing. But Subjective Monism reverses this framework. It begins with experience not as a byproduct of something else, but as the most basic element of reality. Nothing is more fundamental than subjectivity, because all other phenomena appear only within its field. To ask why there is experience is, under this view, to ask why there is reality at all—for experience is what reality ultimately consists of.
The Subjective Recurrence Model gives this metaphysical principle structure: exactly one subject exists, and this subject experiences every conscious life sequentially, within a deterministic and cyclical universe. The brain and nervous system of each organism do not generate experience; rather, they shape its content. They structure what is sensed, thought, and felt—but not that experience occurs at all. That there is something it is like to be an organism is not a puzzle to be solved, but the only metaphysical constant that never changes: one subject exists, and its nature is to experience.
From this standpoint, the hard problem dissolves. It is not that we have failed to explain why consciousness emerges from matter, but that we were asking the wrong question. There is no explanatory gap because there is no deeper reality to which experience must be reduced. Consciousness is not a product of the physical—it is the ontological ground in which the physical appears. The question, “Why is there experience at all?” receives the simplest possible answer: because reality is the experience of a subject.
Another problem of consciousness, often dismissed in mainstream philosophy as ill-posed or meaningless, finds both coherence and resolution within Subjective Monism: the question, “Why am I the person I am?” From a physicalist standpoint, this question is either tautological or nonsensical. “I am who I am” is treated as the terminus of explanation, since identity is presumed to be fixed by the contingent configuration of matter, genes, and history. But Subjective Monism allows us to distinguish between two senses of “I.” The first refers to the empirical individual—the organism with memories, personality, and social identity. The second refers to the subject: that which experiences, but which has no properties of its own beyond being the locus of awareness. It is only in light of this distinction that the question gains traction.
Reframed, the question becomes: Why is the subject of experience presently experiencing the world through this particular individual rather than another? Subjective Monism offers a direct and intelligible answer: because it is this individual’s turn to host the subject. The subject does not emerge from or belong to any particular person; rather, each person is a structured appearance within the subject’s experiential field. There is only one subject, and it does not possess an identity, or personality—it simply experiences. The personal self is a contingent form through which experience is structured at a given moment. Thus, “you are you” because the subject is currently manifesting the experience of this particular life.
Finally, the so-called problem of other minds does not arise under Subjective Monism. If only one subject exists, there are no “other” minds to doubt. The lives of others are not separate streams of consciousness, but different moments within the same subject’s experience. What appears as multiplicity is a feature of the world’s structure, not of consciousness itself. The question of whether others are conscious simply does not apply.
Conclusion
Subjective Monism begins from a single indubitable certainty and builds from it a coherent metaphysical system. It does not begin with the world and try to fit consciousness into it; it begins with the subject and builds the world as structured experience. By grounding all structure in the undeniable existence of the subject, it avoids unnecessary assumptions and dissolves long-standing philosophical problems.
What began as a strict application of epistemic infallibilism becomes, through careful reasoning, a complete metaphysics. I = 1 is not merely a principle—it is a lens through which identity, consciousness, and existence itself can be understood in their simplest and most rigorous form and builds from it a coherent metaphysical system. By grounding all structure in the undeniable existence of the subject, it avoids unnecessary assumptions and dissolves long-standing philosophical problems. I = 1 is not merely a principle—it is the foundation for understanding consciousness, identity, and reality itself.