Representational Drift and Apparent Cosmological Expansion: A Constraint-Based Account Under Finite Representability

Representational Drift and Apparent Cosmological Expansion: A Constraint-Based Account Under Finite Representability This paper examines large-scale cosmological observations from a representability-based perspective. Rather than introducing new dynamics, modifying gravity, or revising standard cosmological models, it asks which observational relations remain admissible once mutual representational closure across distant systems can no longer be maintained. Redshift, luminosity attenuation, and apparent acceleration are treated as structural outcomes of representational drift rather than as direct evidence for additional physical drivers. Under finite representability, outward observational relations can persist without reciprocal normalization, yielding signatures that are observationally indistinguishable from expansion and acceleration without requiring global dynamical coordination. The analysis preserves the empirical success of ΛCDM and related frameworks and does not reinterpret their local calculations. Instead, it reduces the interpretive burden placed on their parameters by showing how large-scale regularities can arise as regime-dependent consequences of representational limits. Cosmological observations are reframed as constraint-consistent appearances rather than as indicators of unseen substances, global forces, or extended temporal accumulation.