ontology of reach: first ideas

The basic issue of ontology can be stated in terms of reach. “How far does my being reach?”

Kid’s play of competing who can reach a taller signpost by jumping is an example of the attitude (without, maybe, the wordiness). To reach means that there your being can go. It might not go, by choice or accident, it might be there only very slightly, but it is possible.

Or, to state it negatively, the being cannot extend itself where it cannot reach. What one cannot reach is beyond one’s existence: it does not exist for it. So, we can come with those definitions:

Universe

all that might be, or more precisely all that is, of which only a part is reachable.

Existence

all that is, or more precisely all that my being can reach, or all the places where i can be.

Subject

all that my will reaches, or more precisely all that is directly subjected to my will.

The reaching action will progressively redefine it’s own set of possibilities, in the same sense that the “third dimension” expanded the possibilities of Cartesian Coordinates. From the naive idea of reaching as touching to reaching as seeing to reaching as knowing to reaching as proposing.

It now becomes clear how epistemology derives from ontology.

This progression also describes the evolution towards abstraction of complex beings.