What Remains When Absolutely Nothing Changes?: A Purely Ontological Foundation Independent of Physical Concepts

In this paper, I use the thought experiment of a completely (= absolutely) static, non-changing world in order to answer the following research question: "What is present even when absolutely nothing changes?" The thought experiment shows that, among other things, stuff, force, space, and time do not belong to those properties of Being that are bound to change. These properties are not to be understood in the physical-scientific sense, but in the purely ontological sense. They form the ontological basis and are given both in an absolutely static world and in a changing world. They constitute the common (= intrinsic) aspect of both worlds. One aim of this investigation is to develop clearer conceptual boundaries by distinguishing those ontological properties that are not dependent on change from those that are, in order to subsequently distinguish more precisely between the properties of the physical and the properties of consciousness. This paper lays the first explicit conceptual foundation for a new ontological theory: the NPS Systemontology. It postulates that the fundamental elements of a changing world are systems and, building upon this, establishes a new form of panpsychism: systemic panpsychism.