Can manifestness exist without a subject-object structure?

{
 "schema_version": 1,
 "artifact_type": "argument_fabric_dossier",
 "question_id": "q:manifestness-without-subject-object",
 "question": "Can manifestness exist without a subject-object structure?",
 "why_it_matters": "This question separates nondual from dualist interpretations of experience. If manifestness requires a subject-object polarity, then consciousness is intrinsically relational and Trika's claim of nondual self-luminosity is incoherent. If manifestness can be non-relational, then subject-object structure is a modification rather than a necessary condition of awareness.",
 "status": "live_crux",
 "resolution_level": "phenomenological",
 "parent_questions": [
  "q:prakasa-definition",
  "q:consciousness-fundamental"
 ],
 "candidate_explanations": [
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:nondual-self-luminosity",
   "tradition_scope": "trika_advaita_vedanta",
   "name": "Nondual self-luminosity",
   "best_case": "Pure consciousness is self-manifesting without requiring a subject-object split. The subject-object structure arises through vimarśa's projective power (ābhāsa), but the ground of manifestness is contentless awareness that is its own light. Deep sleep, absorption (samādhi), and minimal phenomenal experiences support this.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Self-luminosity (svaprakāśatva) is not a relation between subject and object but the very nature of consciousness.",
    "Subject-object duality is a modification within manifestation, not its precondition.",
    "The fact that we can report on nondual states, however imperfectly, indicates a form of manifestness without subject-object polarisation."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "All evidence for nondual awareness is necessarily retrospective and shaped by conceptual recovery.",
    "It is unclear whether nondual manifestness is a distinct type of awareness or a failure of memory/discrimination.",
    "The account must explain why subject-object structure is nearly universal without making it necessary."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "phenomenological",
     "condition": "A first-person report of manifest awareness that cannot be analysed as involving either a tacit subject position or a minimal self-model.",
     "status": "untested"
    },
    {
     "type": "empirical",
     "condition": "Demonstration that all reported nondual states are actually subject-object structures with impaired meta-cognitive access, using real-time neural measures.",
     "status": "untested"
    }
   ],
   "initial_status": "live"
  },
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:minimal-subject-necessary",
   "tradition_scope": "phenomenology_buddhist",
   "name": "Minimal subject as necessary condition",
   "best_case": "Every instance of manifestness includes a minimal subject pole—a point of view, a first-person perspective, or a register of 'mineness'—even if not thematised. Nondual states are better described as fusion of subject-object in a field where both poles are present but undifferentiated.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Any appearance is an appearance to or for someone, even if that someone is not an empirical ego.",
    "The phenomenological structure of experience always includes an intentional arc or a field-organising centre.",
    "What Trika calls nondual awareness is the background field, not a state without a point of view altogether."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "The minimal subject risks being a posited theoretical entity rather than a phenomenological given.",
    "It must distinguish the minimal subject from the empirical ego without simply renaming the same structure.",
    "Deep sleep and anaesthesia cases challenge the claim that a subject pole is universally present."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "phenomenological",
     "condition": "A first-person description of experience in which no aspect functions as a point of view, location of awareness, or minimal self, confirmed by independent phenomenological interview.",
     "status