Ontology has long tried to speak as if relevance were an afterthought.
First there is what exists, we are told; only later do questions arise about what matters, what appears, what draws attention, what is significant. Relevance is relegated to psychology, pragmatics, or epistemology — a secondary filter applied to an already completed world.
This order of explanation is backwards.
If relevance were optional, nothing would appear at all.
1. The quiet assumption ontology keeps making
Much contemporary metaphysics proceeds as if the following were unproblematic:
Everything exists equally; differences in salience are merely subjective or practical.
The intent is often generous. It is meant to avoid anthropocentrism, parochialism, or illicit privilege. But the result is not neutrality — it is ontological incoherence.
A world in which everything is equally real is a world in which nothing can appear as anything.
Appearance is not an add-on to being. It is the mode in which being is available at all.
If ontology cannot account for why something shows up as this rather than that, it has explained existence only by erasing phenomenon.
2. Why relevance cannot be pragmatic
Relevance is often dismissed as pragmatic:
relevant to us
relevant to inquiry
relevant to action
But pragmatics presupposes a field within which something can already count.
To say that relevance is merely pragmatic is to assume that the world is fully present prior to any differentiation — a complete inventory awaiting selective attention.
This assumption is exactly what the post-totality perspective has already dismantled.
There is no completed field from which relevance could be selected.
Relevance is not a choice made within a world. It is what makes a world appear at all.
3. Equal reality is not ontological humility
The slogan “everything is equally real” sounds cautious, even ethical. But ontologically, it does no work.
Equal existence does not entail equal appearance.
If ontology refuses to distinguish without privileging, it ends up refusing distinction altogether. And without distinction, there is no phenomenon — only an undifferentiated abstraction that no one ever encounters.
The problem is not that ontology distinguishes.
The problem is when it pretends not to — while smuggling distinctions in under the name of observation, attention, or use.
A disciplined ontology must say how relevance arises without appealing to:
subjective preference
psychological salience
instrumental utility
That task cannot be deferred. It is constitutive.
4. Relevance as constitutive constraint
Relevance is not a ranking imposed on a finished totality.
It is the constraint structure under which anything can appear.
To say that something is relevant is not to say it is important, valuable, or preferred. It is to say that it stands in relations that make it count within a structured possibility.
Relevance is not additive.
It is selective in the strongest possible sense: without it, there is no selection because there is nothing to select from.
This is why relevance cannot be postponed to epistemology. Epistemology presupposes phenomena. Relevance explains why there are any.
5. From totality to salience
Once totality is refused, ontology faces a new obligation:
Explain not everything — but this.
These are not empirical questions. They are ontological ones.
Relevance names the discipline that replaces totality. Where totality promised completeness, relevance provides intelligible appearance. Where inventories failed, salience does the real work.
This does not reintroduce privilege. It replaces it with structure.
6. What this series will do
This series will argue that:
Relevance is constitutive, not pragmatic
Ontologies that deny relevance cannot explain appearance
Cuts generate salience without privileging frames
Phenomena are relevance-structured construals
Incompleteness is a condition of relevance, not a defect
The task ahead is not to decide what matters.
It is to explain why anything can matter at all.
That explanation begins here.
No comments:
Post a Comment