Constraint and Explanation in a Minimal Ontology: From Solipsism to Conatus

This paper develops a minimal ontology that reconstructs the conditions under which structural realism becomes possible without presupposing an external world. Starting from the minimal condition that something is given as non-collapsing persistence, it derives the necessity of constraint and introduces its minimal realization as a constraint structure C = (X, R). From this, epistemic locality follows: each operational array has access only to a local substructure of the constraint structure. Under this condition, explanation takes the form of local constraint reconstruction while preserving the space of still-unexcluded possibilities, and explanatory adequacy is introduced as an ordering over constraint-preserving reconstructions. Such reconstruction cannot be completed within a single operational trajectory. It requires comparison across operational arrays and is stabilized through the reduction of collective structural error. From this structure, conatus is derived as a necessary trajectory-level condition for persistence under constraint, formalized through the coordinate system (A,I,W,η). Action and morality are then reconstructed as structural dynamics over this coordinate system rather than as products of external normative primitives. This framework unifies ontology, cognition, explanation, collective structure, science, action, and morality within a single constraint-based system, and recasts identity, quantum interpretation, and formal incompleteness as consequences of epistemic locality. [Notice] A Korean translation of this paper is available at:10.5281/zenodo.19952814