Fault-Lines of the Old Paradigms: 10 Anti-Realism’s Empty Workshop: If Nothing Is Real, Nothing Can Be Related

Anti-realism declares the opposite of realism:

there is no independent world, no mind-independent reality, no fixed truth.

All that exists are our concepts, interpretations, or conventions.

At first glance, it appears humble, cautious, even wise.

It rejects the hubris of realism.

But under relational pressure, anti-realism collapses from restraint into emptiness.

If nothing is real, nothing can sustain relation.

If nothing can be related, the very framework that allows experience, knowledge, or discourse vanishes.

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1. Anti-Realism’s Overcorrection

Anti-realism tries to solve realism’s problem by erasing the “out there” entirely:

• “Everything is interpretation.”

• “Truth is relative to observers.”

• “Objects exist only as constructs.”

But relational ontology shows this is a category mistake:

Relations require relata.

Potentiality requires actualisation.

Knowledge requires something to know.

If the world is nothing but conceptual overlay, anti-realism has removed the scaffolding that makes thought, communication, and experience possible.

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2. Nothing to Relate To

Relation is ontologically prior:

a system of structured potential actualised through perspectival cuts.

Anti-realism strips away the very substrate of relations:

• No actuality → no phenomena

• No phenomena → no instances

• No instances → no systems

• No systems → nothing to constrain or coordinate meaning

Without anything to relate, the anti-realist workshop is empty.

All the interpretive machinery spins in a vacuum.

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3. The Epistemic Consequence

Anti-realism undermines its own explanatory power:

• Knowledge collapses, because knowledge presupposes something to be known.

• Communication collapses, because meaning presupposes shared relational potential.

• Discourse collapses, because discourse presupposes structures capable of sustaining cuts and perspectives.

A system that erases its own ground cannot explain anything—not the world, not knowledge, not itself.

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4. The Ontological Core

Relational ontology reframes the stakes:

• The world is structured potential.

• Phenomena are perspectival actualisations.

• Construals are relational cuts.

• Relation is primary; objects, observations, and interpretations are derivative.

Anti-realism inverts this hierarchy:

it takes the derivative (interpretation) as primary,

and eliminates the condition of possibility (relation).

The result is an empty workshop, spinning without foundation.

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5. Punchline: Emptiness Eats Itself

Anti-realism’s appeal is seductive:

it promises freedom from metaphysical hubris,

but delivers a system that cannot sustain any explanation.

If nothing is real, nothing can be related.

If nothing can be related, nothing can be known, construed, or communicated.

The anti-realist world is a vacuum.

It is not liberating.

It is not epistemically safe.

It is structurally incoherent.