Author: Daniel B. Newman
Published: August 13, 2026

fPerspectivalism (fPism) names what follows epistemically from the non-substance ontology of fRadical Emergence (fRE).

In the first article, I asked what might happen if I acted as if fRadical Emergence were true. Here, I continue that experiment.

If what appears thing-like is an emergent condition rather than an independently existing entity, then perspective, distinction, claim, measurement, and knowledge cannot be exempted. A local cut, as I use the term, is neither a boundary enacted within a phenomenon nor a boundary around what exists. In bridge language, what exists is indistinguishable from the cut itself.

Even indistinguishable presumes two terms and a perspective from which their difference could be assessed. Within fRE, the comparison does not fail; no such distinction or comparative perspective is available. I use the dual register as an epistemic bridge into that implication.

What becomes valid does so locally. Its coherence does not imbue it with authority, validity, or even existence elsewhere. The warm Thanksgiving I described in the fRE ontology article was not contained within my cut as one version of an underlying dinner; it was what existed, indistinguishable from the cut itself. My brother’s painful Thanksgiving was likewise what existed, indistinguishable from the cut he described. Neither existed as the other’s Thanksgiving.

A representation such as 1+1=2 may recur wherever ordinary arithmetic is operative. Each occurrence may be locally valid. Coherence across those recurrences can make validity appear portable or make the recurrence seem to access a more fundamental mathematical thing. Under fRE, there is no more fundamental thing to access. The representation and canon may recur; validity becomes locally operative with each recurrence rather than passing between them. Validity, authority, and existence are not carried with the representation.

I use fPerspectivalism to name these epistemic implications of fRadical Emergence.

Which leaves me with a practical question: if every cut is a local stabilization and there is no shared ground beneath any of them, how can I build anything without quietly putting the ground back?