Papers at a Glance

How to read this overview

The sections below group the papers by their role in the project. The order is not meant as a strict reading sequence, but as an orientation map. It helps distinguish foundational boundary analyses, dynamic framework papers, papers on model-capable orientation and revision, papers on reality orders and domains of validity, and later applications or boundary analyses.

The central project term is Epistemic Reality. Epistemics names the web presentation and, more narrowly, the paper that develops the analysis of orientation structures, model validity, and revision under finite conditions. The brief descriptions below are intended to make the function of each paper visible without repeating the general introduction of the homepage.

Papers and Their Functions

Epistemological Starting Point

Realism Without an Outside – Cognition-Relative Realism and the Limit of Positive Determinability

This paper forms the epistemological starting point of the project. It argues that the problem does not begin only with the assertion of an external world, but already with the concept of an “outside” itself. The so-called outside is analyzed as a stabilized interpretation of the limit of positive determinability, not as a positively determinable domain beyond cognition. In this way, the paper explains why the later models of the project cannot begin from a naïvely presupposed world-in-itself, but must reconstruct reality, stabilization, orientation, and model formation from within the operations of cognitive systems. It therefore prepares the methodological ground for the functional and reconstructive research architecture. Its primary contribution is the negative limit-rule of the project; it does not already provide the full positive architecture of contingency mechanics, Epistemics, or the later differentiation of reality.

Dynamic Core Architecture of Finite Order Formation

Contingency Mechanics – Variation, Stabilization Tension, and the Emergence of Viable Order in Finite Systems

This paper develops a general dynamic frame of finite order-formation. Contingency mechanics describes how finite systems transform open possibility spaces into viable continuations through variation, e-profile formation, e₀-proximate stabilization, immanentization, actualization, friction, and reorganization. It extends the project context by adding a process logic of order formation, but it does not replace the more specific analysis of orientation structures, model validity, and revision developed in Epistemics.

Transition from Givenness to Model-Capability

From the Field of Experience to the Model – Epistemic Stabilization and the Localization of Uncertainty under Finite Conditions

This paper examines the level before the explicit model. It argues that models do not arise directly from experience, but presuppose epistemically ordered fields of experience that have already been differentiated, stabilized, and made workable. The paper determines epistemic stabilization as the transitional operation through which fields of experience become model-capable and shows that uncertainty is often not simply reduced, but first made localizable through provisional stabilization. Its function within the project is to sharpen the concept of the model and to connect stabilization, validity, friction, and revision at the pre-model level.

Ontologization as an Epistemic Basic Operation

This paper reconstructs ontologization functionally rather than metaphysically. Ontologization is analyzed as a necessary stabilization process by which finite epistemic systems render a dynamic experiential field manageable and referable. It also clarifies the characteristic malfunction: reifying functional set-ups into final descriptions of reality, thereby producing epistemic rigidity and revision resistance.

Orientation Structures, Model Validity, and Revision

Epistemics – Orientation Structures, Model Validity, and Revision under Finite Conditions

This foundational paper introduces Epistemics as the analysis of orientation structures, model validity, and revision under finite conditions. It is neither a metaphysics nor a normative theory and does not replace any existing discipline. Its object is the clarification of the conditions under which finite cognitive systems stabilize experience, expectation, and action, form model-capable orders, and lead, limit, or revise models. A model is understood as a condensed, guidable orientation structure with determinable validity. The central diagnostic concepts are costs, friction, and revision: costs mark the effort of stabilization, transfer, or revision; friction marks the epistemically readable non-fit of an activated expectation, connection, or model structure under conditions of performance; revision describes the controlled processing of such strain without simply abandoning stabilization.

Domains, Boundaries, and Transition Functions – On Domain-Relative Validity, Migration, and Coupling of Models under Finite Conditions

This paper develops an integrated architecture of domain-relative model validity. Domains are not treated as given regions, but as functionally reconstructed spaces of order with their own functional logic, stability conditions, and criteria of validity. The paper shows how models encounter stability problems at domain boundaries, under which conditions model migration becomes possible, why transition functions determine functional connectability, and why domain coupling is decisive for the viability of models.

Friction – Boundary Signal of Finite Load-Bearing Capacity in Subjective, Intersubjective, and Functional-Empirical Stability Spaces

This paper develops friction as a structural concept for stability under load. Friction indicates where stabilization becomes disproportionately costly or loses load-bearing capacity. It functions as a diagnostic tool for overextension, externalization, and blocked revision, and it describes how friction generates selection effects over time between competing stabilization patterns.

Revision under Finite Conditions – A Theory of Model Transformation in Epistemics

This paper develops revision as an autonomous epistemic basic operation under finite conditions. It shows that scientific rationality consists not only in stabilization, friction, falsification, and search, but also in the controlled capacity to reorganize existing model orders under pressure. The paper defines revision as the mediating transformation operation between strain, loss of validity, exploratory opening, and renewed stabilization, and it clarifies its forms, triggers, criteria of rationality, and typical failure modes.

Efficient Search under Finite Conditions – A Dual-Mode Architecture of Search and Stabilization

This paper develops an explicit switching architecture between stability consolidation and exploratory opening under finite conditions. Building on Epistemics and friction, search is reconstructed as a dynamic configuration of stabilized transition types. Friction functions as a diagnostic indicator of declining robustness gains relative to rising costs, marking structural switching points between optimization and exploration. The paper extends the infrastructural vocabulary of the project into a formal search architecture.

Contextual and Global Falsification of Scientific Models: An Integrated Theory of Epistemic Validity

This paper reconstructs scientific rationality beyond a binary Popperian picture. It distinguishes contextual from global falsification and integrates insights from Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, model theory, and approaches to approximate truth into a unified framework of model validity. Its function within the project is to make domain-specific validity conditions and model selection constraints explicit, including the enabling conditions under which certain models remain epistemically indispensable despite partial failures.

Reality Order and Domains of Validity

Relative Reality Theory: Degrees of Reality, Validity, and Stability in Fragmented Knowledge Environments

Relative Reality Theory provides an ordering framework for real-world reality conflicts. Reality is treated as a graded, context-dependent status rather than an absolute property. The framework differentiates modes and degrees of reality via experiential immediacy, intersubjective stability, and functional efficacy, helping to identify category errors, dissolve pseudo-conflicts, and explain why certain realities remain stable under contestation.

Beyond Physics and Metaphysics – Epistemics and the Differentiation of Reality into Subjective, Intersubjective, and Functional-Empirical Physics

This paper proposes an alternative ordering to the classical physics-metaphysics distinction. It differentiates reality into distinct physics of stability, subjective, intersubjective, and functional-empirical, not as an ontological hierarchy but as domain-specific regimes of validity, stabilization mechanisms, load limits, and boundary signals. It shows how metaphysical functions can be reconstructed epistemically without ultimate ontological claims.

Intersubjective Domain and Shared Reality

The Intersubjective Domain – Intersubjective Conditionality, Take-Up, and Shared Connectability under Finite Conditions

This paper provides the foundational analysis of the intersubjective domain within Epistemic Reality. It examines how subjective orientation is co-conditioned by the orientations of others without already presupposing consensus, normative recognition, or shared reality. Its central concepts are intersubjective conditionality, communicability, take-up, shared connectability, and correction. The paper shows that intersubjective order does not arise from agreement, but from the possibility that references can be taken up, contested, shifted, corrected, and continued under conditions of difference. Its function within the project is to ground later analyses of shared epistemic reality, shared reference spaces, trust, institutionalization, and science by clarifying the elementary structure that makes intersubjective connection and correction possible.

Shared Epistemic Reality – Intersubjective Stabilization, Reference, and Validity under Finite Conditions

This paper develops shared epistemic reality as the stabilized elaboration of the intersubjective domain. Building on the analysis of intersubjective conditionality, take-up, shared connectability, and correction, it examines how more durable shared spaces of reference, expectation, trust, institutionalization, validity, scientific testing, friction, and revision arise under finite conditions. Its function within the project is to show how elementary intersubjective connectability becomes a shared, correctable, and revision-open form of reality without being reduced either to mere consensus or to immediate access to an absolutely determinable external world.

Applications and Boundary Analyses

Why a Cosmological World Model Is Not Enough – On the Overextension of the Unity Claim in Modern Cosmology

This paper analyzes persistent cosmological tensions not as mere data inconsistencies, but as indicators of architectural overextension. It argues that cosmological practice already operates with domain-specific modeling regimes without explicitly marking their domain dependence. Tensions appear as anomalies only because a unified world-model claim is maintained beyond its effective scope. The paper shifts the level of falsification from parameters to model architecture and interprets persistent tensions as structural reorganization signals.

The Limits of the Self in Ontological Materialism: On the Indeterminacy of Exclusive Personal Identity

This paper analyzes a structural limit of ontological materialism with respect to exclusive personal identity. It argues that under materialist assumptions and principled duplicability, standard functional, causal, and psychological criteria can be multiply satisfied without yielding a further criterion that fixes exclusive numerical identity. The paper functions as a boundary analysis of ontologization and reduction, clarifying where a worldview’s identity claims exceed what its own resources can determine.