The Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World

The provided text comprises excerpts from a scholarly essay titled "The Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World (MEOW)" by Bry Willis, an independent scholar, which proposes a relational metaphysics intended to resolve the long-standing debate between realism and idealism. Willis argues that this traditional conflict rests on a false dichotomy stemming from the inherited assumption that "mind" and "world" are independently existing substances. The MEOW framework asserts that the fundamental unit of reality is the encounter-event, a structured occurrence where mediation (biological, cognitive, cultural structure), presentational structure, and constraint (resistance or stability) co-emerge. Under this ontology, "mind" and "world" are treated as derivative abstractions—patterns distilled from regularities across these basic encounter-events—thereby accommodating objective constraint without requiring unmediated access to a hidden external world. The essay details MEOW's core commitments, contrasting it with adjacent traditions like phenomenology and enactivism, and outlines its implications for epistemology, philosophy of science, and cognitive theory.Full Essay on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17685689