Integrative Realism — Glossary

The Dual-Aspect Claim (Axiom I)
 

The first axiom of Integrative Realism: reality has both structural-relational properties, described by physics, and intrinsic properties that are proto-experiential, with neither aspect reducing to the other and the two ontologically inseparable.
 

The Integration Principle (Axiom II)
 

The second axiom of Integrative Realism: complexity arises from simplicity through progressive integration, and no new fundamental kind of thing appears except through the integration of simpler elements already present.

Structural face
 

The relational, measurable side of reality — how things are positioned, how they interact, and how they evolve — described by physics with cumulative accuracy. It captures how things relate, not what they are in themselves.
 

Intrinsic face
 

What the bearers of physical structure are in themselves, as opposed to how they relate to other things. Because physics is a science of relations, it cannot reach the intrinsic face; this is the side of reality that is what consciousness is made of.
 

Integration
 

The progressive organizing of simpler elements into more complex, unified wholes. In Integrative Realism it is the single mechanism behind all complexity — including the unified subjectivity of a conscious mind, which is something integration produces rather than something added from outside.

Proto-experiential
 

The character of the intrinsic face in its most rudimentary form: genuinely in the family of conscious experience, but far simpler than anything imaginable. The decisive qualification is that proto-experiential elements have experiential character without being subjects.
 

Proto-temporal / Proto-temporality
 

The intrinsic face of time: a bare capacity for succession, inseparable from proto-experience and present at the most fundamental level. It is argued to be fundamental rather than emergent, because integration — the mechanism of emergence — is itself a process and so already presupposes a minimal dimension of time.
 

Experiential character vs. subjectivity
 

A central distinction in Integrative Realism. Experiential character is the qualitative what-it-is-likeness an element can have without being a subject. Subjectivity is the unified, perspectival standpoint for whom experience is had, and it is produced by integration. Separating the two dissolves the hard form of the combination problem, because there are no micro-subjects at the base that would need to be fused.
 

Combination problem
 

The problem of how many small experiential entities could combine into a single unified mind — the standard objection to panpsychism. Integrative Realism avoids its hard form by placing only experiential character, not subjects, at the fundamental level, so there are no small minds to combine; what integration produces is the unified subjectivity of an organism.
 

Dual-access epistemology
 

The theory of knowledge that follows from the Dual-Aspect Claim: because reality has two faces, there are two ways of knowing it. Structural knowledge is third-person, public, and mathematical; acquaintance knowledge is the first-person knowing of direct experience. Each is incomplete alone, and together they exhaust what can be known.
 

Constitutive incompleteness
 

The permanent inability of structural (scientific) description to reveal intrinsic nature. It is not a temporary gap awaiting better instruments but a feature of what structural inquiry is — physics describes how things relate without disclosing what they are in themselves.
 

Epistemic structural realism
 

The philosophy of science entailed by the system: science discovers real relational structure with genuine, cumulative accuracy, yet is permanently unable to reveal intrinsic nature. It is distinguished from ontic structural realism, on which structure is all there is; here, direct acquaintance gives access to an intrinsic nature that structure does not exhaust.
 

Process-self
 

The self understood not as a soul or substance, and not as an illusion, but as a real, continuously maintained, self-modeling pattern of integration. The governing image is the whirlpool: unmistakably real as a pattern, yet inseparable from the medium that sustains it.
 

Constitutive valence
 

The positive or negative character experience takes on once integration becomes self-maintaining — once a system actively holds its own pattern against dissolution. Disruption of that self-maintaining pattern is the origin of suffering; its restoration is the origin of relief. This valence is part of what the experience is, not a judgment projected onto a neutral sensation, and it does the foundational work in the system's ethics.