The Ontological Particular

To be is to be something, and to be something is to be this rather than that. In other words, it is not the same as to run quickly. You can also run slowly while you cannot be other than something. Hence, an 'abstract particular' (the concept of being) is semantic nullity, a conceptual chimera. Unlike functional categories (a vehicle, a person; in fact all other categories are functional), the raw specificity of "this-ness" (haecceity) evades articulation through the lens of the universal.

Consequently, for an entity to emerge from the undifferentiated void, it must incorporate a specific meaning to attain identity. Here, the emergence of being and the emergence of meaning do not merely coincide; they are functionally identical.

But how does something become meaningful, or – given the above – how does it become what it is? And please note: not how a baby is born (an organism evolves), a code is written, a move is made or an artwork produced. We are not observing the productive acts of nature, logical rigor or art (birth, coding, or composition). We are interrogating the metaphysical event of identity itself: the eruptive 'how' through which a thing becomes its own definition: How something becomes what it is? A most peculiar question indeed; a profound puzzle nonetheless.

The Tautology of "Mind"

The common claim that the human mind "projects" the world as a meaningful realm is an explanatory dead-end. To invoke the "Mind" is merely to relocate the enigma, substituting one mystery for another without addressing the fundamental mechanics of emergence. Recourse to the mind’s "entrenched categories" to explain the origin of meaning is a classic case or circular reasoning; it begs the question by assuming the very categorical meaningfulness it is tasked to explain. We remain bereft of a vocabulary capable of bridging the gap between the raw physical process and the meaningful extract.

The true enigma lies in the very emergence of meaning amid the raw forces that drive physical, chemical and biological dynamics, wherefore and no conceptual constructs will do to resolve that gap.

The Meta-Problem of Philosophy

The perennial enigmas of philosophy are mere derivatives of this single mystery. The unique crux of the philosophical problem lies not in any specific phenomenon within the world, but in the very capacity to project the world as a coherent existential realm. This includes the capacity for inquiry itself. What are we doing or what is happening when we generate meaning? Not when coherent symbols (words, sentences) or their metaphorical substrates and functional analogues (thoughts, ideas) are exchanged in a medium, but when the metaphysical phenomenon of meaning-generation itself takes place.

Our descriptors fail us at the threshold: we oscillate between the language of production (generation) and the language of discovery (projection), while 'emergence' remains a metaphor for a conceptual impossibility – an attempt to name the leap from nothing to something. In what modality, then, does meaning reside?

The Absolute Leap of Language

Meaning is a fact that defies reduction to constituents. We do not construct the world as a carpenter builds a chair; rather, we project it as an all-encompassing habitat. This capacity is acquired through the mastery of speech, suggesting that language is not a mere tool for communication, but the very medium through which the Absolute Leap from neuroscience to existence is sustained.

Meaning is as evident as any physical notion, yet it remains transcendent – an eruptive "something else" that points toward a missing conceptual dimension.

We proceed.