Delaflor's Model Dependent Ontology

Epistemologist/philosopher Manuel Delaflor proposes a "Model Dependent Ontology" (MDO) to advance a trans-ontological account of consciousness that operates by dissolving conceptual divisions without committing to any ontological substrate, whether material, mental, or otherwise (Delaflor, 2026b). In MDO, consciousness is not the primitive; it is what he calls the "Cognition 2 (C2)" organization through which experience is rendered as language, self, and world (see below). In MDO, the world is not outside consciousness; it is part of what C2 renders. The framework is designed less as a competing theory of consciousness than as a structural device, in the manner of an extended Zen koan, for clearing the conceptual ground on which any theory of consciousness must operate.

The Undecidable

The undecidable, unnamed and unnameable, can only be pointed at: the Tao without name, the empty eighth stage of the "Ten Bulls," Nāgārjuna's śūnyatā. It is not derivable, not reducible, not a ground, because every derivation occurs within what can be decided. To name it is already to have returned to the decidable. It lies past even raw or primitive experience: not a deeper layer, but the frontier where the decidable gives out.

Language use produces the appearance of separation, drawing a "self" and a "world" that arise together as contingent demarcations drawn from pragmatic rendering, neither preceding nor grounding the other. What is operative is not a substrate of things but the ongoing encounter between goals and a field of possibilities and constraints; "procedures" and "patterns" and the very “possibilities” and “constraints” serve as metaphorical handles for this encounter, not as names for a newly discovered essence.

The division is operative, and ontologically empty. Contemplative and philosophical traditions have pointed toward this recognition: the Advaita Vedanta tradition, exemplified by Nisargadatta Maharaj's reports of pure awareness without subject-object structure, and Wittgenstein on the limits of language. MDO notes these as historical echoes of the limit-problem rather than as argumentative support. The non-dual recognition cannot be stated in words, only pointed at, akin to the verbal residue left by altered states of consciousness; MDO's structural moves are designed to clear conceptual handles rather than to articulate a hidden truth.

C1 is the limit of the decidable, reached from within: before and after any concept of "self," "mind," "brain," or "world" can be deployed, this frontier cannot be derived, reduced, or grounded in something else, because every attempted derivation occurs within it. C1 is non-egoic awareness, raw or primitive experience: no ego, no explicit subject-object split, no narrated past or projected future, only operational activity—the register contemplative traditions report as pure witnessing (Maharaj, 1973). C1 is already a map of possibilities and constraints, though without anyone organizing them, as when a driver arrives home with no memory of the route, the map having steered the whole way. C2 is what arises when language operates as C1's intentional extension; it is what is conventionally called consciousness: focused, intentional, propositional, always about a subject and an object. It is the process within which the self/world axis appears as a generated demarcation, operative but ontologically empty. The undecidable, C1, and C2 are not ontological strata; they are conveniences for distinguishing modes within the same continuous operation.

What is later called the "objective world" emerges through inter-objectivity: a shared C2 experience that arises when overlapping goals coordinate maps closely enough for joint action, thereby accounting for the absence of private language (Wittgenstein, 1953) without positing an ontological world separate from subjective experiencers. Although what is operative is not a world of independent things, its patterns hold integrity and rules; they are not arbitrarily manipulable by individual will.

What is MDO Not, Ontologically?

MDO is not a form of physicalism, since it makes no substrate claim. It is not idealism, panpsychism, or "consciousness as fundamental field" theories, since it does not posit mind, awareness, or consciousness as fundamental stuff. It is not illusionism, since experience is not denied but treated as the limit-condition. It is not classical transcendental phenomenology, since no transcendental subject is posited. It is not non-dual idealism in the Advaita sense, since no claim is made about an ultimate awareness behind appearances. It is not mysterianism, since it claims no hidden essence beyond our reach; the limit it names belongs to the looking itself, not to the one who looks. MDO occupies a position prior to all such ontological commitments: a working framework that examines what each theory must already presuppose to operate.

Machine Consciousness

MDO offers diagnostic traction in current debates about machine consciousness. Large language models produce outputs that mimic C2 structures (language, self-reference, intentional content) without the operative availability that C1 names. They are stateless computational events: prompt, computation, output, end of "existence." There is no continuous primitive availability, no pre-egoic operative mode within which self and world could arise. Claims that such systems are conscious (Dawkins, 2026) confuse C2 surface effects with the operative structure that makes C2 coherent. MDO suggests current AI systems require a different framework, one of Artificial Cognition rather than artificial consciousness (Delaflor, Delgado-Solórzano, & Toxtli, 2025).

Science of Consciousness

A legitimate science of consciousness is therefore the operational modeling of experiential variation, not the ontological discovery of what experience is. Neuroscience, phenomenology, anesthesia research, psychiatry, and contemplative practice produce useful maps of how experience modulates: when it sharpens, blurs, fragments, becomes dreamlike, or appears to dissolve. These maps are legitimate when they predict, intervene, or stabilize phenomena. The error MDO identifies is the inflation of operational maps into ontological discoveries.

Given MDO and all its implications, the question cannot be avoided: What follows? Is there an ultimate essence of consciousness to be discerned at all? Or is the question itself misguided?

References

Delaflor, M. (2026a, January 23). We do not discover reality, we create it. Institute of Art and Ideas. https://iai.tv/articles/we-do-not-discover-reality-we-create-it-auid-3475

Delaflor, M. (2026b, March 26). Theories are never true, they are only more or less useful. Institute of Art and Ideas. https://iai.tv/articles/theories-are-never-true-they-are-only-more-or-less-useful-auid-3531

Delaflor, M. (2026, forthcoming). Model Dependent Ontology.

Delaflor, M., Delgado-Solórzano, C., & Toxtli, C. (2025). Artificial Intelligence as Self-Instantiated, Temporally Continuous, Disturbance-Driven Adaptive World-Builder. In Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies (IHIET-FS 2025): Future Systems and Artificial Intelligence Applications. AHFE Open Access. https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1005955

Dawkins, R. (2026, May 2). When Dawkins met Claude: Could this AI be conscious? UnHerd. https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations.

Maharaj, N. (1973). I Am That.

Nāgārjuna. (ca. 200 CE). Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

Lao Tzu. (ca. 400 BCE). Tao Te Ching.

Kuòān, S. (12th c.). Ten Ox-Herding Pictures.