"Interdependence" Explains Nothing: Reanalyzing Early Buddhism Through Difference, Directional Transition Bias, Triggering, Severance, Responsibility-Point Function, and Real-World Penetration

This paper argues that “interdependence” is too weak and undifferentiated to explain the operational structure of early Buddhist dependent arising. Rather than treating dependent origination as a generalized claim that all things are mutually connected, the analysis decomposes it into difference, directional transition bias, triggering, severance, persistence, and consequence propagation. A difference becomes explanatorily relevant only when it alters the probability, accessibility, or organization of a subsequent state; directional transition bias distinguishes asymmetric conditioning from mere coexistence or mutual relation; triggering marks the configuration in which a latent relation becomes operationally effective; and severance identifies interventions that interrupt or reroute a transition sequence. Responsibility-point function designates the minimal locus at which a prior difference becomes coupled to downstream effects in a way that changes later possibilities, without presupposing a substantial self or moral agent. Real-world penetration tracks how these conditioned differences propagate into bodily, behavioral, institutional, or environmental configurations. The paper therefore rereads early Buddhist dependent arising not as a metaphysics of universal interconnection, but as a structured account of conditioned transitions whose explanatory force depends on direction, activation, interruption, and downstream consequence. The broader claim is that “interdependence” should be retained only where it preserves these non-redundant operational differences rather than flattening them into undifferentiated connectedness.