Distinction Ontology: From the Undistinguished to the Generator

Distinction Ontology asks how determinate structures can arise without presupposing objects, subjects, relations, spaces, or rules as already given. It begins from the undistinguished, understood not as nothingness or chaos but as the absence of operative distinctions, and follows one minimal unfolding initiated by a bare distinction. The resulting movement is reconstructed through a recurring contour: distinction, repetition, exhaustion, elementary state, radical distinction, and restructuring. Along this line, homogeneous multiplicity becomes internally differentiated; relations acquire modes and direction; invariant contours become forms; and self-preserving forms develop into localities whose encounters can return upon the organization of their own boundaries. From locality arise developed possibilities of choice, consciousness, knowledge, trace, history, and symbol. Information is consequently treated not as a primitive substance but as retained difference available for further distinction. The Generator names the recurring generative work visible across these transformations. It is neither an entity nor a final stage, and its contour does not prescribe the positive form of what follows an exhausted organization. The proposed ontology is therefore neither a literal chronology of the universe nor a closed metaphysical system. It is a reflexive and revisable reconstruction of how apparently given forms may arise, stabilize, conceal their histories, reach their limits, and become available for reorganization.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-08-20
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22027808
Primary Topic
Embodied and Extended Cognition
Type
preprint
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Distinction Ontology: From the Undistinguished to the Generator

Aleksandr Khorobrykh
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Embodied and Extended Cognition
preprint

Distinction Ontology: From the Undistinguished to the Generator

Aleksandr Khorobrykh
preprint en

Abstract

Distinction Ontology asks how determinate structures can arise without presupposing objects, subjects, relations, spaces, or rules as already given. It begins from the undistinguished, understood not as nothingness or chaos but as the absence of operative distinctions, and follows one minimal unfolding initiated by a bare distinction. The resulting movement is reconstructed through a recurring contour: distinction, repetition, exhaustion, elementary state, radical distinction, and restructuring. Along this line, homogeneous multiplicity becomes internally differentiated; relations acquire modes and direction; invariant contours become forms; and self-preserving forms develop into localities whose encounters can return upon the organization of their own boundaries. From locality arise developed possibilities of choice, consciousness, knowledge, trace, history, and symbol. Information is consequently treated not as a primitive substance but as retained difference available for further distinction. The Generator names the recurring generative work visible across these transformations. It is neither an entity nor a final stage, and its contour does not prescribe the positive form of what follows an exhausted organization. The proposed ontology is therefore neither a literal chronology of the universe nor a closed metaphysical system. It is a reflexive and revisable reconstruction of how apparently given forms may arise, stabilize, conceal their histories, reach their limits, and become available for reorganization.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Reduced inequalities
Embodied and Extended Cognition
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Distinction Ontology: From the Undistinguished to the Generator — Aleksandr Khorobrykh · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS