The Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World: A Relational Metaphysics Beyond Mind and World

This paper develops the Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World (MEOW), a relational metaphysics that dissolves the inherited realism–idealism dichotomy by treating encounter-events rather than substances as ontologically primary. Both realism and idealism presuppose a subject–object architecture in which “mind” and “world” exist independently and subsequently enter into epistemic relation. MEOW argues that this bifurcation is conceptually untenable: all access to reality is structured through mediation (biological, cognitive, cultural), yet experience also exhibits genuine resistance that cannot be reduced to projection or construction. An encounter-event is analysed as a unified relational occurrence in which mediation, presentational structure, and constraint co-emerge. “Mind” and “world” are reinterpreted as abstractions distilled from stable patterns across such events, rather than as metaphysical primitives. Worked examples from colour perception and scientific inference illustrate how cross-perspectival stability is achieved without invoking a noumenal substrate. MEOW is positioned within, but distinguished from, phenomenology, pragmatism, enactivism, process philosophy, and agential realism. By relocating ontology at the level of encounter rather than substance, MEOW preserves empirical constraint, avoids epistemic foundationalism, and reframes longstanding disputes in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The framework provides resources for future work on causation, temporal organisation, cognition, and the interpretation of scientific practice.