A Thought Experiment: collision Democritus`s atoms

This text represents a working version of a thought experiment whose aim is to examine the limits of the materialist concept of substance. It does not claim to be a completed treatise, but rather the initial form of a future, considerably more rigorous and developed critical confrontation with an ontology that identifies substance with matter and understands matter as a material, measurable, spatially extended fullness absolutely indifferent in itself. The text is therefore deliberately constructed as a sequence of successive stages: from the simplest image of two Democritean atoms, through the problem of collision and receptivity, to the need to overcome the rigidly materialist determination of substance in the direction of a fundamentally different ontological concept—the concept of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

It is important to emphasize at once that the scientific character of contemporary physics is not being called into question here. The thought experiment does not begin from the thesis that contemporary physicists actually believe in Democritean atoms as small, hard, indivisible spheres moving through the void. We are not aware of any physicists who would defend such a conception, and attributing it to contemporary physics would therefore be inaccurate and philosophically naive. The aim is different: to examine whether, despite the abandonment of ancient atomism at the level of physical theory, its deepest ontological impulse persists in certain metaphysical interpretations of the contemporary scientific image of the world — the idea that the ground of reality is in itself indifferent, unintelligible, external both to itself and to the other, while every form of experience, meaning, receptivity, and consciousness appears only subsequently, almost as if by magic, as an arbitrary addition to a substrate originally blind and mute.

In this sense, the Democritean atoms in this text are not the object of a historical reconstruction of ancient philosophy. They are deliberately sharpened philosophical figures. They represent an extreme model of the rigidly materialist concept of substance: small material fullnesses possessing measurable properties, units that enter into purely external relations but are absolutely indifferent both to themselves and to other forms of matter. If it turns out that not even the most minimal receptivity can be derived from such units, this does not prove an already completed alternative ontology; but it does open the way toward a more radical thesis: substance can no longer be adequately thought as dead matter, but requires a concept in which relation, difference, receptivity, self-determination, and poietic formation are immanent possibilities of being itself.

1. The Initial Difficulty: Substance as Matter

Within a certain materialist ontological intuition, the concept of substance is almost imperceptibly reduced to the concept of matter. It is difficult to isolate a deeper self-evidence than this: “substance is matter.” Even when one speaks in rigorously scientific language, introducing the concepts of energy, field, interaction, quantum states, forces, or structures, a certain metaphysical presupposition may remain unchanged: what truly is is imagined as a ground that is in itself deprived of every receptivity, meaning, and immanent directedness toward the other, while its determinations and relations are understood primarily as external. Consciousness, meaning, value, receptivity, and experience then appear as subsequent products — as something that, in a manner still unexplained, emerges from an originally indifferent and unconscious ground.

This reduction of substance to matter is not merely a terminological error. It cements an entire ontological architecture. If substance is nothing other than matter, where matter is understood as that which is in itself relationless and indifferent, then everything resembling something inward must either be treated as appearance or explained as a non-substantial, secondary effect of external arrangements. Within such an ontological architecture, receptivity is not an originary determination of what truly is, but a late hypercomplex formation, grounded in still more complex arrangements of that which is absolutely indifferent. Perception is then not a highly developed form of the manifestation of non-indifference, but a peculiar and ontologically secondary consequence of physical processes. Meaning is not an immanent possibility of reality, but must be reduced to a construction or function of the nervous system. What is remains mute, while consciousness appears as an enigmatic addition to this deep ontological muteness.

A materialist ontology therefore need not be vulgar in order to be problematic. Its deepest difficulty does not consist in respecting science too much, but in often assigning to scientific descriptions a metaphysical meaning that does not follow from them. Physics may speak of energy, mass, momentum, fields, quantum states, symmetries, and regularities. But it does not follow from this that substance is, in fact, synonymous with absolute indifference. It is precisely at this point that philosophical critique begins. It does not dispute scientific results, but asks the following question: what concept of an ontological ground do we presuppose when we interpret those results as the final ontological truth?

The thought experiment with Democritean atoms is meant to radicalize the tensions already brought to reflection. It takes an extremely simplified form of the materialist concept of substance in order to show a problem that more complex theories often conceal. If we imagine two completely indifferent material fullnesses, which move, collide, and change their states, the question remains: is there really any evidence of this event possible in such a world? Or do we have exclusively an objective change in the arrangement of matter that exists only from the perspective of a possible observer, but never for the very units of reality themselves, the actual protagonists of this event?

2. The Democritean Atom as a Philosophical Figure

The Democritean atom in this text should be understood as an ideal model of the rigidly materialist concept of a material unit. It is indivisible, material, spatially determinate, measurable, capable of moving and of entering into dynamic but purely external relations with other atoms. We may imagine it as a tiny sphere, as a solid fullness, as something possessing shape, size, position, weight, density, velocity, and direction of motion. It does not matter whether it floats in the void or falls freely; nor does it matter whether we attribute to it color, taste, temperature, or some other sensory analogy. What matters is that we understand it as a form of reality whose determinacy is exhausted in measurable or externally observable properties.

Such an atom has no inner relation to itself. In fact, we cannot meaningfully speak of any “self” here; even our referring to it by a pronoun is deeply problematic — such immediacy represents a complete absence of “selfhood.” It does not know that it exists. But more importantly: it is not even minimally affected by its own existence. Its existence does not exist for it. It has no for-itself, no inner receptivity, no element of meaningful differentiation. It exists only as a material fullness that can be described from an external perspective. Its truth is available to the observer, but not to itself. It is, in the strictest sense, absolutely indifferent.

This is precisely why the Democritean atom is so important a figure of rigidly materialist ontology. It shows what a world would be like if its basis were composed of units wholly external both to themselves and to the other, absolutely deprived of that aspect which might be thought as inwardness. They may move, collide, combine, separate, and change arrangement, yet in none of them does there arise a relation toward such events. From their perspective — so to speak — the occurrence of the events in question has the same value as their non-occurrence. Such a world could have geometry, mechanics, and dynamics, but within its basic units there would be nothing resembling inner life. Everything would change, but no change would possess immanent validity within those material units themselves. Everything would happen, but nothing would happen to anyone.

Thus, already at this first step, a question arises that materialism often does not pose radically enough: what does it mean for something to exist? Is it enough that it exists as a measurable configuration in the third person? Or does existence, in its deepest truth, already require some form of non-indifference? If reality were merely a collection of units absolutely indifferent to their own existence and to others, then the world would be an endless exteriority without inwardness. Such an image may perhaps describe motion, but it cannot explain the emergence of the certainty of an event, that is, the fact that some events are nevertheless known.

3. The Collision of Two Atoms: An Event for the Observer and a Non-Event for the Atoms Themselves

Let us now imagine two such atoms. They move through the void, approach one another, and finally collide. From an external point of view, the event is entirely clear: there are two trajectories, a moment of contact, a change of direction, perhaps an exchange of momentum, a change in velocity or energy. An observer can describe the collision mathematically, draw it, calculate it, and represent it as a physical event. But from the perspective of the atoms themselves — to put it that way once again — the collision does not exist.

Yet the decisive question is: does the collision exist for the atoms themselves? Not in the sense that they think about it, not in the sense that they name it, not in the sense that they form a representation. The question is much more elementary: is there any change within them that would warrant the conclusion that, despite everything, the atoms are not absolutely indifferent to the fact that the collision really occurred — a change, that is, that would amount to something more than a change in temperature, energy, density, velocity, or any other externally describable physical property? If the atoms are merely indifferent material fullnesses, then the answer is negative. The collision changes their external characteristics, but does not become an event for them. They do not encounter one another. They merely occupy a configuration that we, as observers, describe as a collision.

This distinction is crucial. Materialism may reply that atoms need know nothing about the collision for the collision to be real. This is true in one sense. The collision, as a physical change, may indeed be real. But this comes nowhere near answering the deeper question: how can a world in which events never happen for the participants themselves give rise to any form of noticing, registering, taking account, perception, receptivity, or consciousness? If, at bottom, everything is merely a change of state that can be described externally, then the existence of a being capable of relating to something other than itself remains in principle inexplicable within such an ontological framework.

Thus, the problem is not that materialism cannot speak of change. It can speak of change very precisely. The problem is that change, understood as a pure external change of state, is not the same as receptivity. An atom can change direction without any inner relation to another atom. It can change velocity without any experiential moment. It can be part of an infinitely complex chain of causes and effects without there ever arising within it even the most rudimentary form of certainty that anything within that infinity of happenings is actually taking place. This reveals the emptiness of the materialist concept of substance: it permits events, but does not permit an event to have any value whatsoever for the very protagonists of the event.

If we were to imagine all of reality as a set of such collisions, we would obtain a world that can be described but cannot be opened from within. In it there would be changes, but no certainty about those changes; relations, but only from the perspective of a magical observer; complexity, but no meaning; dynamics, but no receptivity. In such a world, the emergence of consciousness would not merely be a complex problem, but an ontological scandal. For non-indifference does not arise from pure indifference. The world would continue to exist, as physics knows it, but from the perspective of its protagonists, the existence of this world would have the same value as its non-existence.

4. Indifference as the Hidden Basis of Materialist Substance

The key determination of the rigidly materialist concept of substance, in its extreme form examined by this thought experiment, is not its materiality, but its absolute indifference. Matter is not problematic because it occupies space, because it is primarily quantitatively determined, measurable, and physically active. The problem arises only when such determinations are taken as final and absolute determinations of what it truly is — when substance is thought as something that can stand in innumerable relations, while none of those relations for substance itself has any value whatsoever; that can undergo ceaseless changes, while no change means anything to it; that can be subject to the action of something other, while that other within its own immanence does not hold as other. Then substance exists, yet even in the most rudimentary sense it is not for itself something existing; it participates in happening, but every happening — “from its perspective” — has the same value as non-happening; it stands in relations, but does not have itself: it is an exemplar of complete self-deprivation, since for itself it is neither something nor nothing — there is not yet within it that for-itself within which the very distinction between something and nothing could have any validity, nor does such immediacy reveal any aspect that could be called interiority. Precisely this absolute indifference — and not materiality as such — constitutes the hidden ontological presupposition of the rigidly materialist concept of substance.

Absolute indifference is not an incidental characteristic of such an ontology. It is its silent metaphysical foundation. If fundamental being is indifferent, then all subsequent non-indifference must be derived from something that is in itself absolute indifference. Materialism then confronts its most difficult task: it must show how sensitivity arises from the absolutely insentient; how, from that which can be thought exclusively as pure exteriority, there arises something with an interior; how, from mere collision, there arises the experience of that collision; how from absolute self-deprivation there arises meaning.

The most common answer is: “complexity.” When matter is organized in a sufficiently complex manner, when nervous systems, brains, feedback loops, information, and processing operations arise, consciousness then appears. In other words, when the elementary units of absolute indifference are connected in a purely external, yet hypercomplex way, then “something non-indifferent” arises. This answer has great scientific importance at the level of describing the conditions under which complex forms of consciousness actually appear. But it does not resolve the deepest ontological problem. Complexity can explain new forms of organization, but only if there already exists at the basis something that can be organized as receptive. If the basic units are absolutely indifferent, their multiplication and combination do not automatically produce interiority. Out of politeness, we must not ask established science how units of absolute indifference, of their own accord, establish the most complex forms of organization, how it ever “occurs” to them to embark upon such a thing…

The complexity of indifference remains indifference, unless a principle of non-indifference is introduced. A thousand dead exteriorities do not yield a single living, pulsating relation to something, unless it is shown how purely external immediacy is transformed into immanent non-indifference. This does not mean that complex forms of organization are unimportant. On the contrary, they are necessary for the development of higher forms of receptivity. But the very possibility of receptivity cannot be produced from absolute non-receptivity. It must belong to a far more basic, fundamental structure of the real.

In this sense, materialism often rests upon a hidden miracle. It first posits the basis of reality as indifferent, and then expects non-indifference to somehow appear from it. This “somehow” is the point on which philosophy must insist. It is not enough to say that consciousness appears when matter reaches “a certain degree of complexity.” Such a “Deus ex machina” will never pass muster before thinking endowed with a refined speculative sensibility. It must be shown why any degree of complexity could produce being-affected, if in no element of reality we can find an aspect that could rightfully bear the name receptivity.

5. The First Attempt to Rescue Materialism: Adding Sensitivity

Materialist ontology may attempt to avoid this difficulty by ascribing some kind of sensibility to the basic units of reality. For example: an atom reacts to another atom. A particle changes its state under the action of another particle and—let us suppose—enters a state of excitation. The immediacy of the material fullness of one atom responds to the action of another atom, whereby this “response” is no longer exhausted in a change of trajectory, position, or other externally measurable aspects of motion, but is described as a change within its own immanence—it has, so to speak, “become different from within.” Apparently, we have thereby taken the decisive step: indifferent matter is no longer entirely indifferent, because it now reacts. But it is precisely here that one must be most careful. Not every reaction is sensibility.

If an atom changes the direction of its motion after a collision, that is indeed a reaction in the physical sense. If its energy, temperature, spin, configuration, or state changes, that too may be a reaction. But a change of state is not yet sensibility, if the latter is understood as inner being-affected. A reaction can remain entirely external despite the fact that the change of the atom truly constitutes an expression of the irritation of its material fullness. Namely, this irritation still need not—to put it thus—refer the atom itself to something other, external to and different from it. One ball rebounds from another; its own fullness is felt, but there is no meaning of “a blow caused by the action of another” — if we may here rely on such an articulation. A system changes the value of some magnitude, but this does not mean that a positivity has appeared within it by virtue of which the system itself enters into a state of “reckoning with another,” figuratively speaking.

Therefore, the question must now be posed more strictly: what does it actually mean for something to be sensitive? If we reduce sensibility to mere physical mutability, then everything that changes is thereby already sensitive. A stone would be sensitive because it heats up, metal because it expands, gas because it changes pressure, and every particle because under the action of another particle it passes from one physical state into another. But through such an extension the concept of sensibility does not become richer; rather, it is almost entirely emptied. For then one can no longer distinguish that which is merely subjected to change from that which is in some way affected by change; that which merely passes from one state into another from that in whose own immanence the action of another begins to appear as something with which one must reckon. In other words, it is not enough that the other produce an effect. It is necessary that this effect not remain a merely blind modification of state, but that in the very immanence of what is affected it establish at least the most meagre form of non-indifference toward that which caused the change. Only here does what we may call receptivity begin—not yet the perception of the other, not its representation, not even its validity as Other, but proto-noetic reckoning-with-another, a minimal inner receptiveness by virtue of which that which comes from outside is no longer ontologically the same as if nothing had happened. Therefore, we must strictly distinguish change from receptivity, reaction from inner receptiveness, physical excitation from that most rudimentary positivation in which the possibility first appears that something, however still poor and unarticulated, is for the affected immanence.

If, then, we have allowed the possibility of the most rudimentary sensibility, sensation cannot be treated as some subsequent addition to already established receptivity: it constitutes the immediate expression of sensibility itself, the most primitive feeling in which the immediacy of material fullness is no longer merely physically altered but is, in some way, affected by its own change. But even thereby the decisive step has not yet been taken. For sensation can remain entirely enclosed within the immanence of that which feels: an atom can, to employ an extremely conditional formulation, “feel” its own excitation, without thereby having in the least emerged from its encapsulation within its own fullness. That which affected it can remain merely the cause of its alteration, without thereby acquiring any validity for it as something with which it would have to reckon. Sensation would then be merely immediate self-affection, perhaps even the most rudimentary form of self-relation, but not yet authentic receptivity. For receptivity begins only where affected immediacy is not merely different nor merely feels its own difference, but where there arises in it at least an infinitely impoverished non-indifference-toward-something — where something, however still indeterminate and without noematic articulation, is for the first time taken into account. Only in this proto-noetic reckoning-with-something does the possibility of that most rudimentary positivation appear which we may designate as “is”.

Therefore, the difficulty cannot be resolved by simply ascribing sensibility to an already predetermined, purely material substance. If sensibility is to designate authentic receptivity, then it can remain neither mere physical mutability nor closed hyletic self-affection. Sensation may still be merely feeling of its own alteration, an event that does not lead immediacy out of its encapsulation within its own fullness. The decisive transition arises only when that which affects is, in affected immediacy itself, at least in the most rudimentary way taken into account — when there appears that proto-noetic reckoning-with-something in which absolute indifference is for the first time genuinely disrupted. Then it is no longer enough to say that substance possesses materiality and changes its states. In its own immanence, another dimension of determinacy must also be possible: not yet representation, not concept, not articulated Other, but the most meagre positivity of that “is” by which that which affects ceases to be ontologically the same as if nothing had happened. And as soon as meaning appears as the authentic effect of receptivity, the rigidly materialist determination of substance can no longer remain in force. Materiality then remains its real moment, but it can no longer be its sufficient determination: substance must be thought as at once material and immanently intelligible.

6. The Difference Between Alteration of State and Receptivity

The most important transition in the thought experiment is the distinction between a change of state and receptivity. A change of state can be entirely external. A thing can be pushed, heated, deformed, displaced, accelerated, or slowed down. All this can be described without assuming that the thing itself in any way establishes an inner relation to what has happened, for it is pure self-deprivation. Receptivity, by contrast, means that a being is not merely changed, but that in its own immanence something begins to be taken into account — that the change is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-occurrence (“from the perspective of that which is deprived of itself” — to put it thus — it makes absolutely no difference whether the change occurs or not). In this still wholly rudimentary sense, we may speak of noticing or registering, but only insofar as we do not ascribe to these expressions already developed perception, representation, or cognition. To be affected means precisely this: that a being is no longer indifferent either to its own alteration or to that which alters it, but that, in the very immanence of its being, it reckons, in the most meagre possible manner, with itself and with that which is other.

This reckoning-with-the-other should not immediately be understood as consciousness, representation, perception, or judgment. Receptivity has infinitely many levels and differentiated modes of manifestation. In its lowest form, it need not be comparable to human experience. But if we entirely deprive it of every immanent intelligibility, of every capacity for the immediacy of that which is genuinely different to be taken into account, even in the most meagre manner, and to acquire some meaningful expression within the immanence of that which is affected, then we have once again reduced receptivity to a mere change of state. Only in more developed forms can this meaningful expression be articulated as the other; in its most primitive form, it is enough that that which affects is no longer ontologically equivalent to its absence. A mere change of state is not sufficient to explain how an authentic expression of non-indifference ever appears.

Therefore, receptivity, even in its poorest form of manifestation, implies the overcoming of the rigidly materialist concept of substance: substance, accordingly, is not merely material but is — at the same time — immanently intelligible. It implies the possibility that each form of the immediacy of that which is may be something other than an exemplar of pure self-deprivation — however bold this may be here, at this moment in the development of our reflection. Only for such a form of the immediacy of that which genuinely is does it make a difference whether it is exposed to some action and whether, in the process, it undergoes some change. And only then does this difference not remain something merely external, but acquire some meaningful expression in the very immanence of an immediacy that is not indifferent. This difference must be immanently expressed. The other must, in some manner, be “interiorized,” “present in” the being that is affected — not as its finished representation, but as a meaningful difference that its being-affected expresses within its own immanence. For this reason, discrete meaningful contents — “is,” “something,” “other,” etc. — function as the other-being of an immediacy that is genuinely different. Only when thought frees itself for the possibility of positing meaning as the primary and immediate expression of the manifestation of receptivity does there appear before it an immediacy that truly manifests itself as receptive, non-indifferent, an immediacy that nevertheless — and precisely by virtue of this immanent meaningful content — overcomes its encapsulation within what is its own in-itself. Once again, the primary effect of manifested receptivity is not a finished representation, nor a concept in the colloquial sense of the word, but a minimal meaningful-differential determinacy, a primitive noema.

If we now return to the atoms, we can say: the collision remains a mere physical change insofar as it is exhausted in a change of their trajectory, energy, or some other externally describable state. The collision as a receptive event begins only when that which comes from the other atom does not remain merely an external cause of change, but acquires, in the very immanence of the affected immediacy, at least the most meagre meaningful expression. This still does not mean that the atom “perceives” the other atom, represents it, or articulates it as a determinate Other. It suffices that the action of the other is no longer ontologically equivalent to its absence: that a minimal meaningful-differential determinacy appears in the affected immanence — at first perhaps only an “is”, “something”, and only in more developed forms “other”. Precisely here the proto-noematic moment appears: not as a finished noema of consciousness, but as a primitive noema, as the most meagre meaningful content in which that which was externally merely an action acquires its other-being in the immanence of that which is affected. The atom then, in the most conditional sense, reckons-with-the-other: not because it knows what has affected it, nor because it recognizes the cause of its change, but because that which affects it is no longer entirely without significance within its own immanence. Without such a meaningful-differential expression, the collision remains only external causality and a change of state, and not an authentic receptive event.

Materialism may respond that such a proto-noematic moment is unnecessary, since forces, laws, interactions, and changes of state are sufficient to explain what occurs. But if the ontological content of the event is entirely exhausted in such externally describable relations, materialism remains in the “third person”: it can show how one state passes into another, but not how the difference between an action and its absence acquires any immanent meaningful expression in that which is affected. It can describe the mechanism of reaction, but thereby it has still not explained how reaction becomes receptivity, that is, how that which acts upon it ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its absence. If precisely this transition is excluded from the concept of substance, then the later appearance of receptivity in life, body, consciousness, and language can only be registered or described at ever higher levels of complexity, while it remains unexplained how non-indifference could ever arise from absolute indifference. Therefore, the problem is not that materialism lacks descriptions of changes, but that the rigidly materialist concept of substance does not contain the ontological possibility for change to become immanently significant for that which changes. And without this possibility, there is no authentic receptivity either. Precisely at this point, the rigidly materialist concept of substance reveals its own limitation and, to paraphrase Hegel, a kind of “fear of Truth”: it is prepared to follow change as long as it remains the change of something material, but halts before the possibility that the very appearance of receptivity requires a transformation of the concept of what substance is. For if, in its own immanence, non-indifference to change must be possible, if that which is other can acquire even the most meagre meaningful expression in that which is affected, then substance can no longer be thought solely as something material. Materiality remains its real moment, but it ceases to be its exhaustive ontological determination: substance must at the same time be thought as something immanently intelligible — precisely in that minimal sense of intelligibility which here shows itself to be the condition of possibility of every authentic receptivity.

7. What Does It Mean to Take Account of the Other?

The expression reckoning-with-the-other must now be understood more strictly than its everyday use might suggest. It does not designate calculation, measurement, comparison, inference, or even the recognition of something as Other. In the most primitive form of receptivity, it may be more precise to speak of reckoning-with-something: affected immediacy does not yet know what it is that affects it, nor does it articulate it as an object, a cause, or a determinate other being; yet that which affects it is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Within its immanence there arises at least the most meagre meaningful-differential determinacy, the poorest and least developed noematic content — an “is”, a “something” — by virtue of which the absolute closure of immediacy within its own in-itself begins to be disrupted. Reckoning-with-the-other, therefore, in its deepest sense, does not yet mean having the Other, but being so determined that real difference can acquire its meaningful other-being within the immanence of that which is affected. Only in more developed forms can this most meagre trace of meaning be articulated as the other.

In this sense, reckoning-with-something is the most elementary form of non-indifference. That which is absolutely indifferent can undergo infinitely many changes without any of them acquiring any immanent meaningful expression: it can be moved, heated, deformed, or destroyed, while the difference between these occurrences and their non-occurrence remains ontologically insignificant for its own immanence. Non-indifference begins only where this equivalence is disrupted — where that which affects is no longer the same as if it were absent, and where there appears within affected immediacy at least the poorest noematic trace, an “is”, a “something”. Such immediacy is not yet open toward the Other in the developed sense, but neither is it any longer wholly closed within its own in-itself: within it, the possibility has already been established for real difference to acquire its meaningful other-being. Authentic receptivity therefore does not begin when another being is already perceived, represented, or recognized, but when its difference ceases to be ontologically insignificant for the immanence of that which is affected.

It is precisely at this point that the concept of immanent intelligibility ceases to be an additional presupposition and shows itself to be the inner conditio sine qua non of receptivity itself. If that which affects is to cease being ontologically equivalent to its non-being, then within the immanence of affected immediacy there must be the possibility for this difference, however minimally, to be expressed and differentiated in meaning. This does not yet mean that immediacy possesses a representation of the Other, nor that it recognizes that which affects it as a determinate object or cause. It is enough that real difference can acquire a primitive noematic expression — an “is”, a “something” — and thereby cease to be wholly external to that which is affected. Immanent intelligibility therefore does not here designate the luxury of a developed mind, but the ontological possibility that difference as difference be expressed within the very immanence of being. Without this possibility there is no authentic non-indifference; without non-indifference there is no receptivity; and without receptivity there is no ontological ground from which richer forms of perception, consciousness, and language could ever develop. To be receptive, accordingly, means to be so determined that what is really different can acquire within its own immanence at least the most rudimentary meaningful other-being or, conditionally speaking, being in the medium of meaning.

Of course, this conclusion should not be turned into a naïve panpsychism. We do not claim that an atom possesses experience, representation, desire, or consciousness, nor that there already exists within it a developed subjectivity that would perceive the Other. The claim is considerably poorer, yet ontologically more radical: if the collision is to be more than a mere change of state, if it is to constitute at least the most rudimentary receptive event, then within the immanence of affected immediacy a minimal meaningful-differential determinacy must be possible, by virtue of which that which affects ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Precisely here the lowest form of immanent intelligibility reveals itself: not as consciousness of the other, but as the possibility for real difference to acquire its most meagre meaningful other-being. If such a possibility does not exist, there remain only external causality, change of state, and possible self-affection; there is no authentic receptivity. If, however, it does exist, substance can no longer be thought as purely material and absolutely indifferent immediacy; rather, even in its most elementary determination, the possibility of immanent non-indifference reveals itself.

This distinction is of decisive importance, for it prevents two equally serious errors. The first is rigidly materialist: it deprives consciousness, meaning, and receptivity of an ontological ground by reducing substance in advance to a nexus of external changes and absolutely indifferent relations. The second is an infantile spiritualist error: it fills the void thereby created by ascribing to every particle some little consciousness, representation, or proto-psychic life. A third position is required. Not consciousness everywhere, but immanently intelligible non-indifference as an elementary determination of substance; not a ready-made subject in every immediacy, but the ontological possibility that real difference may acquire meaningful other-being in that which is affected. Receptivity constitutes the first authentic expression of such non-indifference, while in increasingly complex modalities of its manifestation there may appear sensibility, life, perception, consciousness, language, and, finally, speculative knowledge.

8. Immanent Intelligibility as the Essence of Receptivity

If the preceding analysis is tenable, then the essence of receptivity can no longer be sought in mere hyletic irritability, that is, in the capacity of something to undergo a change of its own state under the action of another. A material body can be heated, deformed, or set in motion; a receptor can react; a nervous system can be excited; even a certain self-affection may arise, without authentic receptivity thereby having been established. So long as what occurs is exhausted by the change of state itself — however complex it may be — it remains unexplained how the real difference of that which acts ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and how, within the immanence of that which is affected, it acquires even the most meagre meaningful-differential expression. Only at more developed levels can this elementary meaningful effect become information for an organism, a perception, an experientially relevant content, or a consciously determinate Other; but its deepest ontological condition must be present much earlier. Receptivity is therefore not exhausted by undergoing change, nor even by mere irritability, but presupposes the possibility that what is really different may acquire its meaningful other-being within the immanence of that which is affected. Precisely here its essence becomes manifest: immanent intelligibility is not a subsequent addition to receptivity, but that without which receptivity as receptivity could not arise at all.

Immanent intelligibility does not mean that a being already possesses consciousness, representation, language, or a conceptually articulated capacity for distinction. It designates a far more elementary ontological determinacy: that the immediacy of what is is not absolutely deaf and closed to real difference, but that the difference affecting it can, within its very immanence, be expressed, however meagrely, in terms of meaning. That which is affected need not yet know what affects it, nor must that which acts be articulated as an Other; it is enough that its presence is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. In more developed forms of life, this elementary structure becomes far more visible. A leaf does not “know” light as light, but its organization is not indifferent to the difference between light and its absence: that difference enters into the manner of its own being and produces a determinate inner effect. An organism need not reflexively understand what affects it for the being-affected already to be its own and for the action of another to acquire immanent relevance. Receptivity is therefore broader than consciousness and developed experience, but it cannot be reduced to mere material change either: it is that form of immanent non-indifference in which real difference can acquire its meaningful other-being within that which is affected.

It follows from this that substance, insofar as receptivity belongs to the real possibilities of what is, cannot in its deepest ontological determination be absolutely unintelligible, indifferent materiality. This does not mean that materiality is denied as a real moment of being, but that it can no longer count as its exhaustive determination. For from that which is in itself wholly closed to every immanent differentiation, it is impossible to explain how real difference ever acquires meaningful other-being within that which is affected. Yet it follows just as little that substance must already be constituted consciousness or self-consciousness. Between dead, absolutely indifferent materiality and developed self-consciousness there opens an ontological space that we may here provisionally designate by the concept of plasticity of is-ness: substance is such that its immediacy is not an impenetrable closure within its own in-itself, but bears the immanent possibility of differentiation, receptive being-affected, the meaningful expression of difference, and the transformation of its own determinations. Only in more complex modalities of such plasticity can sensibility, life, consciousness, language, and, finally, knowledge of oneself emerge.

Immanent intelligibility must here be strictly distinguished from mere external intelligibility. A thing may be intelligible to an observer because the observer describes, measures, classifies, and incorporates it into a determinate system of explanation; but it does not yet follow from this that the thing itself is intelligible within its own immanence. Immanent intelligibility means something more demanding: that what is is not a merely unintelligible plenitude upon which a mind confers meaning only from without, but that its own determinacy allows real differences to acquire immanent expression and that its being is not wholly indifferent to the differences that constitute, affect, or transform it. In its most rudimentary forms, this does not yet mean a relation to itself or to the Other in the developed sense, but only the possibility that difference not remain wholly external; in more complex forms, the same ontological possibility can develop into a receptive relation, sensibility, perception, self-relation, and, ultimately, self-conscious knowledge. Our knowledge therefore does not produce the intelligibility of things ex nihilo, nor does it imprint intelligibility from without upon ontologically mute matter; it is possible only insofar as what we know already possesses such a structure that its determinations can be expressed, distinguished, and grasped in terms of meaning.

The thought experiment with the atoms shows precisely the limit to which this analysis has led us: if we conceive the ground of the real as absolutely indifferent and devoid of all immanent intelligibility, then we cannot explain even the most minimal form of authentic receptivity, for we cannot explain how real difference ever ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and acquires meaningful other-being within that which is affected. But if we take seriously what receptivity itself requires, a different ontological horizon opens before thought. Substance can no longer be understood as an inert substrate or as absolutely indifferent materiality, but as something whose own immanence permits differentiation, being-affected, receptive non-indifference, and the meaningful expression of real difference. In this sense, immanent intelligibility is not an addition to an already constituted substance, but one of its constitutive ontological determinations — a determination without which the emergence of receptivity would remain unexplained. It is precisely here that the concept of substance begins to be transformed in the direction of what we shall designate as immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

9. The Non-Thetic “Is” as the First Effect of Receptivity

At this point, the thought experiment receives perhaps its most subtle and ontologically far-reaching supplement. If authentic receptivity does not designate a mere change of state, but the possibility that real difference acquire meaningful other-being within the immanence of that which is affected, then we must ask after its first and most meagre meaningful effect. This effect is not yet sensation in the developed sense, nor perception, representation, recognition of the Other, judgment, or a linguistically articulated assertion. Affected immediacy does not yet know what it is that affects it; it does not yet posit it as an object, cause, or determinate other being. And yet, that which affects it is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Precisely this minimal non-equivalence of presence and absence must acquire its first meaningful expression within the immanence of the affected. We may designate this expression as non-thetic appearing — or, if the term positioning is understood in a strictly non-judicative sense, as the non-thetic positioning of the most meagre noema: “is”. This “is” does not yet say what is, does not ascribe a predicate, does not identify an object, and does not constitute an existential assertion; it is only the most primitive meaningful trace that real difference is no longer ontologically insignificant for the immanence that is affected.

The non-thetic “is” must be strictly distinguished from the explicit judgment “something is”. In judgment, a more developed noematic articulation has already been established: there is a determinate something of which something is asserted; the distinction between subject and predicate, as well as affirmation and negation, is already possible, and at a still higher level so too is the linguistic expression of this determinacy. In the most minimal receptive relation, none of this is yet present. Affected immediacy does not yet know what it is that affects it, nor does it determine it as the Other; yet its presence is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Precisely this non-equivalence acquires its most meagre meaningful expression within the immanence of the affected: “is”. This “is” is not thetic because it is not a consciously posited thesis, judgment, or existential assertion; but it is proto-noematic, because it constitutes the first meaningful moment in which real difference no longer remains wholly external and ontologically insignificant for that which is affected. It does not yet mean “something is”, still less “the Other is”; it is only the most rudimentary validity of being — the first noematic trace through which receptive non-indifference acquires meaningful expression.

Precisely here, once again, but now with greater precision, the difference between mere change and authentic receptivity becomes apparent. An atom that changes its trajectory after a collision is not thereby receptive: its change may be described entirely from without, without any meaningful trace of what has occurred arising within its own immanence. Receptivity begins only when the difference between the action and its non-being ceases to be ontologically insignificant for that which is affected, and when this non-equivalence acquires within its immanence at least the most meagre proto-noematic expression. This expression is not yet the Other; it is neither an object nor a representation, a perceived thing, information, or any determinate content concerning that which affects. It is only the most minimal “is” — the first meaningful trace that what acts is no longer the same as if it were absent. In this sense, the first form of receptive non-indifference is not pain, pressure, sensation, or information, nor even the articulated validity of otherness, but the proto-noematic validity of being of that which affects: an extremely meagre meaningful effect from which “something”, “other”, and more developed forms of noematic determinacy can arise only later.

This does not mean that the atom possesses human consciousness or that articulated thought exists within it. On the contrary, the entire force of the concept of the non-thetic “is” lies in its designating a level prior to developed consciousness. It is the lowest form of meaningful receptivity: the other is received as something, yet is not named, conceptualized, perceived, or linguistically posited. It is, so to speak, a noema before judgment, meaning before concept, validity before reflective thematization. In this way, both materialist indifference and naïve panpsychism are avoided. The connection with the beginning of Hegel’s Logic becomes evident here. The pure “is,” pure Being, need not be understood solely as an abstract initial determination of thought. Within this thought experiment, it may also be understood as the most minimal expression of receptive intelligibility. Wherever the other begins to acquire validity within the immanence of a being, there already occurs the first form of what a Great Logic of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness would have to take as its beginning: not yet this or that determinate thing, not yet developed objectivity, but the elementary validity that something is.

This further sharpens the critique of the rigidly materialist concept of substance. If substance is absolutely indifferent material plenitude, wholly closed to every immanent meaningful expression of difference, then there is no place within it even for the most meagre non-thetic “is”. It may be displaced, deformed, heated, accelerated, or brought into collision; its states may change without end, while the difference between that which affects it and its non-being never acquires any proto-noematic validity within its own immanence. If, however, authentic receptivity requires that this difference cease to be ontologically insignificant and be expressed, however rudimentarily, as “is”, then we have already crossed beyond the concept of substance as dead and absolutely indifferent matter. Substance must be thought as immanently intelligible, for only such an immediacy can be ontologically determined in such a way that real difference acquires within it its first meaningful expression, while not yet being articulated either as “something” or as Other.

The concept of noema is here radicalized and extended from its primarily phenomenological horizon into an ontological one. Noema is not an independent content that would “stand” in consciousness like an object in a container, nor is it an already completed meaning that receptive immediacy would simply take over. It is a meaningful moment within a broader noetic-poietic-noematic activity: the manner in which real difference, as it is receptively received and immanently formed, acquires a determinate meaningful expression. At the lowest level, this expression is still almost devoid of determinacy — the proto-noematic “is”, the most meagre validity of the being of that which affects. Through further differentiation there may appear “something”, “other”, more developed objective determinacy, and then, in more complex forms of being, conceptual and linguistic articulation and, finally, speculative knowledge. This does not mean that all forms of receptivity are exhausted by the noematic: sensation, tone, affective being-affected, and other non-noematic effects may accompany and exceed meaningful articulation. But the basic principle remains the same: to be receptively non-indifferent means to be ontologically determined in such a way that real difference can acquire meaningful other-being within its own immanence — first as an almost indeterminate “is”, and only thereafter as ever richer noematic determination.

This supplement establishes the first immediate bridge between the thought experiment and the future ontology. From the collision of two Democritean atoms, one does not pass directly into consciousness, nor are the atoms ascribed any human psychic life, representation, or hidden subjectivity. Rather, one passes to a far more elementary question: can real difference acquire, within the immanence of that which is affected, at least the most meagre proto-noematic expression — a non-thetic “is”? If such validity is not possible at all, then there is no authentic receptivity, but only external causality and change of state. If, however, it is possible, then it already becomes apparent that substance cannot be an absolutely indifferent and unintelligible plenitude: its own immanence must contain the possibility of the meaningful differentiation of real difference. Precisely at this point, the path opens toward its further determination as immanently intelligible non-indifference, and then toward the question of whether such non-indifference, in more complex modalities of its manifestation, requires not only noetic-noematic openness but also a poietic capacity to form its own determinations. Thus the thought experiment does not culminate in a completed ontology; it merely indicates the point at which the rigidly materialist concept of substance must be abandoned and from which the way begins to open toward the concept of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

Put most briefly: the first meaningful effect of authentic receptivity is not sensation, perception, or representation, but what we have designated as the non-thetic positioning of the most meagre noema — “is”. This “is” is not yet consciousness, but it already marks a departure from absolute indifference; it is not yet a determinate “something”, but it is already the most minimal meaningful-differential determinacy; it is not yet the Other, but it is the first condition under which real difference can eventually be articulated as otherness; it is neither concept nor language, but it constitutes one of the deepest ontological conditions of their possibility. In it, it becomes apparent that what can be authentically affected is not a substance whose inwardness is exhausted by dead and absolutely indifferent materiality, but an immediacy within whose immanence real difference can acquire at least the most meagre meaningful other-being. Precisely in this minimal possibility of meaningful expression, there begins to emerge what will later be determined as immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

10. The Certainty of the Event as the Limit of Materialist Ontology

Now the thought experiment must be sharpened once again. The problem is no longer merely that the rigidly materialist concept of substance fails to explain authentic receptivity, that is, the possibility that real difference acquires even the most meagre meaningful expression in the immanence of that which is affected. The question becomes still more fundamental: what, within an ontology of absolutely indifferent units, makes a collision an event as such? What is at issue here is not the objectivity of physical change. Two atoms may alter their trajectory, exchange momentum or energy, or otherwise modify their state, and all of this may be described with complete legitimacy in the language of physics. But if both atoms are, in their own immanence, absolutely indifferent to what occurs, the question remains: where does the ontological unity of the collision itself reside? Is it anything more than a series of altered relations of position, velocity, and energy that only an external observer subsequently gathers under the single designation “event”? In other words, it is not disputed that the change objectively occurred; what is at issue is whether an ontology that recognizes only absolutely indifferent material units can explain the eventhood of that change—what prevents it from being exhausted by an external succession of states and makes it instead a real occurrence in which something happens between what is different.

This certainty of the event must not be understood from the outset as human, reflective, or linguistically articulated certainty. We are not claiming that the atom knows it has collided, nor that there is within it a judgment: “the collision occurred.” What is at stake is something ontologically prior: whether a real occurrence leaves even the most meagre immanent trace in that which it affects. If the collision is not merely an objective change of state that can be described from without, but an event whose real difference is in some way expressed within the immanence of its participants, then there must be at least a minimal form of non-indifference toward what has occurred. This is not yet knowledge of the event, not a representation of the collision, nor an articulated Other; it is enough that the effect of the other no longer be ontologically equivalent to its non-being, and that in the affected immediacy there emerge even the most meagre proto-noematic trace: “is.” If no such immanent validity obtains, the objectivity of the change is not thereby annulled, but its eventhood remains without an internal ontological ground in the material units themselves: for them, nothing occurs beyond a change of state that has no meaningful effect within their own immanence.

Materialism, insofar as it understands substance as absolutely indifferent material plenitude, can describe with great precision the sequence of physical states: the state before the collision, the course of the interaction, and the state after the collision. It can measure the change in trajectory, calculate the exchange of momentum, determine the change in energy, and reconstruct the entire causal sequence. But this still does not establish the immanent validity of the transition itself—that by virtue of which change is not merely a succession of externally describable states, but a unified event in which the real difference of one participant acquires even the most meagre effect in the immanence of the other. If the atoms are absolutely indifferent to themselves, to the other, and to their own changed state, then the collision objectively exists as a physical occurrence, but within their own immanence it acquires no evental trace: what occurred is, for them, ontologically equivalent to there having occurred, in terms of meaning, nothing at all. A third instance may then measure, calculate, describe, and name the event, yet it remains unexplained what, within the reality of absolutely indifferent units themselves, bears its unity as an event. In that case, eventhood risks being reduced to the epistemological synthesis of an external observer rather than being shown as an ontological moment of the occurrence itself.

It is precisely for this reason that the concept of the non-thetic “is” is needed as the first possible expression of the certainty of the event. This “is” does not mean that a judgment has arisen, that a representation of the event has been formed, or that a consciousness has appeared which knows: “the collision occurred.” It designates something ontologically far more meagre: that the real difference produced by the occurrence is no longer, within the immanence of that which is affected, equivalent to its non-being, and that precisely this non-equivalence acquires even the most rudimentary proto-noematic expression. The collision, as a physical occurrence, may be objective even without such an expression; but if its eventhood is to possess even the most minimal immanent ontological ground in the participants themselves, then what occurred must not remain, for their immanence, wholly equivalent to its not having occurred. The evental trace begins precisely at this boundary: not yet as Other, not yet as articulated otherness, but as the most meagre meaningful validity—“is.” The eventhood of the event, insofar as it is not merely the external synthesis of its description, requires at least the possibility of such minimal meaningful validity of real difference.

From this follows a new critical formula: the rigidly materialist concept of substance can explain change of state, but fails to explain the immanent certainty of the event. It can show that something has objectively changed, but not how what occurred acquires even the most meagre evental trace within the very immanence of that which is affected by the change. If at the ground of the real there is no immanent intelligibility, no possibility for real difference to cease being ontologically equivalent to its non-being and to acquire even a minimal meaningful expression, then eventhood remains without an internal ontological ground in the participants of the occurrence themselves. The world may then be described as an uninterrupted succession of changes, interactions, and causal transitions, but that by virtue of which something truly occurred within these changes remains accessible only to external reconstruction. What we obtain is a process without immanent validity, movement without an evental trace, change without that most meagre “is” by which the difference between occurrence and non-occurrence would become ontologically relevant within reality itself.

This is why this point is decisive for the entire thought experiment. The problem that will appear, in its most developed forms, as the problem of consciousness does not arise only when we ask how human thought can emerge from matter. It arises much earlier—already in the question of how an ontology of absolutely indifferent materiality can explain that objective change acquires even the most minimal immanent evental trace, so that the difference between what occurred and its non-occurrence ceases to be ontologically insignificant for that which is affected by the event. If such minimal certainty of occurrence is impossible, neither is authentic receptivity possible; and if there is not even elementary non-indifference at the ontological ground itself, receptivity has nothing from which to arise. Thus the problem that will later become the problem of meaning, life, consciousness, and language reveals itself already at the lowest level: not in the question of how spirit arises from ready-made matter, but in how any immanent relevance of difference could ever arise from a substance that is, by presupposition, absolutely indifferent. Without this possibility there is no path from bare materiality to meaning—not because materiality is annulled, but because it becomes clear that materiality, understood as absolute indifference, cannot be the exhaustive ontological determination of substance.

11. In-Flective Identification with the Atom: The Limits of Sensation

At this point, one form of in-flection can assist us methodologically. Instead of regarding the atom exclusively from without, as an object of theoretical description whose states can be measured, calculated, and related to one another, we may, within the thought experiment, temporarily and under strict control identify ourselves with one of the material plenitudes participating in the collision. Such identification does not mean that we ascribe a hidden inner life to the atom, nor that we imagine what it is like to be an atom; rather, it is a speculative procedure by which thought attempts to suspend the exclusive third-person perspective and, insofar as this is conceptually permissible, bend toward the possible immanence of the object. In-flection here, therefore, does not claim that we know what “takes place in the atom,” nor does it presuppose in advance that the atom possesses any receptive interiority at all. It poses a stricter question: what would have to be the case in the ontological structure of such a material plenitude for that which affects it to acquire even the most minimal immanent validity? Identification with the atom is thus not a fantastical projection of subjectivity into matter, but a methodological attempt to examine, from within, the very possibility of receptivity.

From this in-flectively assumed position, we can now make a further, strictly controlled supposition: let us imagine that the collision produces, within the immanence of the affected atom, something that we might, in a very broad sense, call sensation. Traditional psychology or epistemology might designate precisely such a lowest form of inner affectedness by this term. Yet it is here that a new difficulty begins. Sensation, understood as affective quivering, inner intensity, pain, pleasure, pressure, or some other affective modification, in itself still says nothing about that which caused it. It may be merely a form of self-affection—a change occurring within the immanence of the affected being and possessing a certain intensity there, yet still bearing no meaningful validity of the real difference from which it arose. In this sense, sensation may constitute a real non-noematic effect of the collision, while that which acts has not yet been received either as “something”, as the Other, or even as the most meagre proto-noematic trace of its presence. Inner affectedness itself, therefore, is not yet identical with authentic receptivity toward real difference.

If, within the limits of our in-flective experiment, we suppose that the atom “feels pain”, it does not yet follow that another atom exists for it. Pain may be only the dim qualitative tone of its own affectedness—an intensity occurring within its immanence while that which caused it has not yet acquired any meaningful validity there. If we suppose a sensation of pressure, it does not yet follow that that which acts has been received as the Other; if we suppose a change in intensity, it does not yet follow that a relation has arisen in the strict sense. Sensation may be an entirely real non-noematic effect of the collision while remaining enclosed within the immediacy of self-affection. Authentic receptivity requires something more: not yet the articulated “something else is”, but at least that most meagre proto-noematic non-equivalence which we have designated as “is”—the possibility that the presence of real difference within the immanence of the affected being is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Only through a further differentiation of this minimal meaningful validity can “something”, the Other, and a more developed relation to otherness arise. We must therefore distinguish strictly between affectedness and receptivity. Affectedness means that something has changed in a being, or that a certain physical, energetic, thermal, sensitive, or affective effect has appeared within its immanence; receptivity begins only where the real difference that produced this effect acquires at least the most minimal meaningful validity. In its lowest form, such validity possesses no psychological articulation whatsoever, does not constitute knowledge of a cause, and does not yet articulate the Other; nevertheless, it must possess that proto-noematic minimum without which sensation would remain merely a closed affective immediacy.

This distinction also marks a boundary against simple panpsychism. It is not enough to say that everything that is possesses some elementary feeling or proto-sensation. Such a claim may appear to mark a radical departure from the materialist ontology of absolute indifference, yet by itself it still does not explain a receptive relation to real difference. If the ontological ground of the world consists only of a multiplicity of elementary sensibilities enclosed within their own immanences, then we may have replaced dead matter with a multiplicity of micro-feelings, but we have not yet shown how that which acts upon one such immanence acquires any meaningful validity within it. Proto-sensation may be intensity, affective tone, or self-affection, while the real difference that caused it remains a wholly unarticulated external cause. The problem, therefore, is not merely whether something feels, but whether, within its immanence, the difference between the effect and its non-being can cease to be ontologically insignificant and acquire even the most meagre proto-noematic expression. Only on this basis can the possibility later arise for that which affects to be differentiated as “something”, and then as the Other.

In-flection therefore shows that a purely sensation-based model is insufficient. When thought temporarily bends toward the possible immanence of the affected atom, it must not stop at the supposition that something is felt within that immanence. It must pose a stricter question: does sensation itself contain even the most meagre meaningful trace of the real difference that caused it? Where does mere inner excitation cease, and where does proto-noematic validity begin? At what point does the difference between the effect and its non-being cease to be exhausted by the intensity of self-affection and become ontologically relevant to the affected immanence itself? If this moment is absent, there is no authentic receptivity, however intense, varied, or qualitatively rich the inner quivering may be. Sensation then remains a non-noematic effect; receptivity begins only where real difference acquires at least that most meagre “is” from which, through further differentiation, “something”, the Other, and a relation to otherness may subsequently emerge.

For this reason, the in-flective procedure is decisive at this point. It does not humanize the atom, ascribe consciousness to it, or turn it into a kind of microscopic soul; on the contrary, its methodological purpose is precisely to prevent such a projection and to examine as rigorously as possible what even the most minimal receptivity would require. What becomes evident along this path is that receptivity, even when thought at the lowest possible level, cannot be reduced to sensation, inner intensity, or mere self-affection. Authentic receptivity requires at least the most meagre meaningful validity of real difference—the possibility that that which affects, within the immanence of the affected being, is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. This proto-noematic minimum is not yet consciousness, representation, judgment, or an articulated Other; it is only that most meagre “is” by which real difference first acquires immanent relevance. Yet precisely thereby we already leave behind the concept of substance as an absolutely indifferent material plenitude and approach its determination as immanently intelligible: as an immediacy in which difference can not only produce a change or sensation, but also acquire at least a minimal meaningful expression.

12. Meaning, Not Sensation, as the First Condition of Receptivity

One of the strictest formulations of the entire thought experiment can now be stated: what first draws the immediacy of a being—especially when conceived as a closed material plenitude—out of its absolute enclosure within its own affectedness is not affective quivering, not sensation, not emotion, nor mere inner excitation, but a meaningful moment. Sensation may be intense, qualitatively rich, and entirely real, yet still remain merely a modification of its own immanence; it may constitute a non-noematic effect of what has occurred, without any meaningful validity of the real difference that caused it. Only when that difference, within the affected immanence, ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and acquires even the most meagre proto-noematic expression is immediacy no longer enclosed within mere self-affection. In this sense, the first condition of authentic receptivity is not sensation but meaning—not yet developed ideational content, not a representation, judgment, or articulated Other, but that minimal meaningful-ideational moment which we have designated as the non-thetic “is”. Only from it, through further differentiation, can “something”, the Other, and more developed forms of noematic relation arise.

Sensation, insofar as it is completely detached from every meaningful validity, remains meaning-blind self-affection. It may be strong or weak, pleasant or unpleasant, painful, obscure, intense, or barely perceptible; it may possess the entire qualitative richness of inner quivering, while none of this by itself yet explains how the real difference that caused it becomes immanently relevant to that which is affected. Nor does emotion, understood in the broadest sense as affective tonality, resolve this problem by itself. It may accompany the receptive relation, modulate it, intensify or transform its qualitative fullness, and even participate in the poietic shaping of an already opened field of meaning; but affective intensity itself does not yet produce proto-noematic validity. Pain without any meaningful moment is not a relation to the real difference that caused it, but a closed affective event of self-affection. Pleasure without such a moment is not yet receptivity, but merely a qualitative modification of its own immanence. Only when that which causes sensation or affective change ceases to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and acquires even the most meagre meaningful expression do we pass from mere affectedness to authentic receptivity.

Meaning, therefore, cannot be understood as a late addition to an already constituted sensation, but as the condition under which sensation can become a moment of authentic receptivity at all. Affective quivering can exist as closed self-affection; but only when the real difference that caused it acquires, within the immanence of that which is affected, even the most meagre meaningful validity does the possibility of relation open up. At this lowest level there is as yet neither “something” nor the Other: there is only the proto-noematic “is”, the minimal trace that the presence of what affects is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. Only through further differentiation of this minimum of meaning can sensation become sensation of something, pain become pain because of something, pressure become pressure of something, and change become change in relation to something. Without meaning there is no “toward”; without a “toward” there is no receptivity. But precisely for this reason, receptivity cannot arise from a substance that is absolutely indifferent at its ground: its possibility already presupposes at least an elementary non-indifference as an ontological determination of that which can be affected.

This does not mean that, at the lowest levels, there already exists a developed concept, an articulated judgment, or consciousness of an object. The meaning at issue here is not a psychological content, a representation, or an already constituted ideational determination, but the most meagre proto-noematic validity. Its minimum consists solely in this: that the real difference affecting immediacy no longer remains wholly external and ontologically equivalent to its non-being. In its lowest form, this meaningful moment can be only the non-thetic “is”: not yet “something is”, and still less “the Other is”, but the most rudimentary immanent validity of the presence of what affects. This “is” is not an uttered assertion, not a judgment of existence, and not the conscious positing of an object; it is the first proto-noematic trace by which the difference between an effect and its non-being is inscribed into the immanence of that which is affected. Such meaning is pre-reflective, pre-linguistic, and pre-conscious, but it is not unintelligible: precisely within it begins the possibility for real difference, through further differentiation, to develop into “something”, the Other, and ultimately into ever richer forms of noematic determinacy.

For this reason, substance, insofar as it is to be the ontological ground from which authentic receptivity, life, consciousness, and meaning are possible at all, can no longer be thought as an absolutely unintelligible and indifferent plenitude. Whatever the modality of its manifestation—atomic, corporeal, field-like, organic, or spiritual—it must be immanently intelligible at its ground. This does not mean that it already possesses human consciousness, conceals ready-made concepts within itself, or, at the lowest levels, already has an articulated relation to the Other. Immanent intelligibility means something more elementary: that its own immediacy is not completely closed to real difference, but that what affects it can, within its immanence, cease to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and acquire even the most meagre meaningful validity. Precisely in this possibility lies the deepest form of its non-indifference. Without it, collisions, interactions, and changes could objectively occur and be externally described, but it would remain unexplained how any of these occurrences can acquire an evental trace, become relevant to receptivity, and open a path toward meaning. Immanent intelligibility is therefore not an additional property of an already constituted substance, but the ontological condition of possibility for real difference ever to become more than an external cause of change.

This also makes clearer why precisely noetic-poietic-noematic activity constitutes the deepest structure of authentic receptivity. Its moments must not be understood as three independent functions successively added to one another. The noetic moment designates the receptive openness of affected immanence to real difference—the possibility that what acts does not remain wholly external and ontologically insignificant to that which is affected. The noematic moment designates the meaningful validity that this difference acquires within that immanence: at the lowest level still only as the proto-noematic “is”, and only through further differentiation as “something”, the Other, and richer noematic determinations. The poietic moment designates the fact that this reception and validity are not mere registration, but a shaping of affected immediacy itself—the manner in which, by being affected by real difference, it acquires a new determination of its own being. Receptivity is therefore neither passive undergoing nor the subsequent addition of meaning to an already accomplished change, but an event in which the reception of difference, its meaningful validity, and the poietic shaping of immanence are inseparable moments of the same activity. What is receptive does not receive an already preconstituted Other; in relation to real difference, it is transformed in such a way that this difference can first acquire within it its most meagre meaningful validity and then, through further differentiation, be articulated as “something” and as the Other.

This claim also marks the limit of the rigidly materialist concept of substance. A materialist description may ascribe ever more complex physical determinations to matter; it may speak of energy, force, field, information, vibration, organization, and even—if it so wishes—of some elementary sensitivity. But as long as it cannot show how real difference acquires, within the immanence of that which is affected, even the most meagre meaningful validity, it has not yet explained authentic receptivity. The problem is not resolved by merely multiplying properties or by introducing ever more complex forms of inner excitation, because between a change of state, sensation, and receptivity there remains an ontological threshold: the possibility that what affects ceases to be a wholly external cause and acquires, within affected immanence, at least a proto-noematic trace of its presence. If this threshold remains unexplained, then so too does the path from objective change to immanent eventhood, from the evental trace to a developed receptive relation and experience, from experience to language, and finally from language to speculative knowledge. The limit of materialist substance therefore does not first appear before consciousness; it manifests itself much earlier—already where it must be explained how real difference can become immanently relevant at all.

The concluding correction, then, is this: the ontological ground of substance is not pure matter, nor pure sensation, but immanent intelligibility. Substance is non-indifferent not because it already possesses consciousness, feeling, or a developed capacity for relation to the Other, but because its own immediacy is not absolutely closed to real difference: what affects it can, within its immanence, cease to be ontologically equivalent to its non-being and acquire even the most meagre meaningful validity. Its deepest ontological determination is therefore not mere hyletic irritability, but the possibility of noetic-poietic-noematic activity—that living pulsation in which affectedness is not exhausted by change or sensation, but real difference can first acquire the proto-noematic “is”, then differentiate itself as “something” and, at a more developed level, as the Other. Only then can what was initially merely an external effect become a moment of the immanent life of that which is: not because substance is hidden consciousness from the outset, but because its non-indifference makes it possible for difference to be received, meaningfully expressed, and poietically shaped in the very mode of its being.

13. From Immanent Intelligibility to the Noetic-Noematic Moment

As soon as the concept of immanent intelligibility begins to unfold beyond its most general determination, it becomes necessary to distinguish its basic moments—but without transforming these distinctions into independent ontological constituents. One of them may be designated as noetic: it signifies the receptive openness of immanence to real difference, the possibility of apprehending, receiving, and differentiating that difference so that what affects does not remain wholly external and ontologically insignificant. The second may be designated as noematic: it signifies the meaningful validity that real difference acquires within this same activity—at the lowest level still only as the proto-noematic “is”, and only through further differentiation as “something”, the Other, and ultimately the more determinate as-what of objecthood. The noetic and noematic moments, however, must immediately be protected against every hypostatization. Noesis is not an independent force or a hidden subject operating behind receptivity, just as noema is not a thing, a content, or an ideal object situated “within” consciousness or being. They are non-independent, mutually implicated moments of a single living activity, distinguishable only for the sake of analysis, but existing in their actual ontological occurrence solely as moments of the broader noetic-poietic-noematic activity.

At the lowest level one should not yet speak of noema in the full phenomenological sense. There is no articulated object of consciousness, no judgment, no concept, no language, nor even a developed as-what in which what affects would already appear as the Other in determinate form. And yet, there is something that may be designated as the proto-noematic moment: the most meagre meaningful validity of real difference within the immanence of that which is affected. Its minimum does not consist in the Other already being recognized or determined, but solely in the fact that the presence of what affects is no longer ontologically equivalent to its non-being. If real difference cannot in any way acquire such immanent validity, then there is no authentic receptivity, but only an externally induced change of state or possible self-affection. If, however, that difference can acquire even the most meagre proto-noematic expression—the non-thetic “is”—then the possibility of a meaningful relation opens for the first time. Only through further differentiation of this minimum can “something”, the Other, and more developed forms of noematic objecthood arise. It is precisely here that the transition from mere change to receptivity begins.

The noetic moment, understood in this broadest ontological sense, is neither a psychological act of an individual nor a distinct inner power of an already constituted subject. It designates the receptive openness of immanence to real difference—the possibility that what affects does not remain wholly external and ontologically insignificant to that which is affected. The noematic moment, for its part, is neither a content situated “in” consciousness nor a ready-made ideal determination, but the meaningful validity that real difference acquires within this very activity: at the lowest level still only as the proto-noematic “is”, and only through further differentiation as “something”, the Other, and more developed noematic determinations. In human consciousness this structure becomes incomparably richer: object-related, reflective, linguistic, and conceptual. But its ontological roots precede psychology and developed subjectivity. They belong to the very non-indifference of substance—to the possibility, grounded in substance itself, for real difference to acquire meaningful validity within its immanence and, precisely through such validity, to open a space for ever more developed forms of relation.

It is precisely for this reason that the rigidly materialist concept of substance proves insufficient. It can speak with great precision about interaction, but from interaction alone it does not yet derive the noetic-noematic structure of receptivity; it can describe a change of state, but has not thereby shown how real difference acquires even the most meagre meaningful validity within the immanence of that which is affected. It can also speak of information, but insofar as it reduces information to a formally registrable or measurable difference between states, it remains unexplained how that difference becomes relevant to the very being in which it appears. In this sense, such a concept of substance remains bound to externality: it describes relations and changes, but does not show how real difference crosses the threshold of immanent validity. If, however, substance is thought as immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness, then the noetic-noematic moment—understood as an analytically distinguished moment of the broader noetic-poietic-noematic activity—is not an addition that appears only with the human being. At the lowest levels it is unarticulated, unconscious, and proto-noematic: real difference can acquire only that most meagre “is”. In life this structure develops as organic receptivity; in the living body as sensibility and affective openness; in consciousness as an intentional relation to objecthood; in language as self-conscious meaningful articulation; and in speculative knowledge as in-flective reproduction of objecthood, in which thought seeks, through its own conceptual and linguistic movement, to retrace the inner path of objecthood’s genesis.

14. The Poietic Moment: Why Intentionality Is Not Enough

If the noetic-noematic moment is analytically distinguished from the poietic, it is still not sufficient to explain the fullness of receptivity or the deepest mode of manifestation of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness. Were we to remain solely with receptive openness to real difference and its meaningful validity, we might once again approach a subtler form of rationalism: the relation would appear to be exhausted in the correlation of apprehension and meaning, of the act and that which holds within it. But in the most immediate modality of noetic-poietic-noematic activity, to grasp, to apprehend, or to understand a determinate WHAT does not mean relating oneself to an already constituted determination that remains external to the very act of grasping. The grasping of that WHAT is simultaneously its poietic enactment: in grasping a determinate meaningful determination, plasticity shapes itself in the same ontological event and is as that determination. The noetic, the poietic, and the noematic are therefore not three successive functions—first apprehension, then formation, and finally meaning—but analytically distinguishable moments of one activity in which the grasping of determination, its meaningful validity, and being as that determination are inseparable. Only in more developed modalities, especially in reflective consciousness, can this original immediacy become differentiated in such a way that grasping appears as the relation of a subject to an object distinct from itself.

The poietic does not mean arbitrary creation out of nothing. It designates the creative and form-giving moment of the plasticity of is-ness itself—the dimension of its activity by virtue of which the grasping of a determinate meaningful determination is not merely a relation to it, but simultaneously its ontological enactment. In the most immediate modality of noetic-poietic-noematic activity, to grasp a determinate WHAT means, in the same event, to shape oneself and to be as that WHAT. The relation to real difference is therefore not neutral either: that which receives difference does not remain an unchanged substrate that merely registers it, but in the very act of receiving determines and transforms itself and acquires a new form of its own being. At different levels, this poietic dimension assumes different modalities: in life, as organic response, metabolism, growth, regeneration, and adaptation; in the living body, as sensory and affective shaping—tension, pain, touch, orientation; in consciousness, as the shaping of attention, perspective, and the mode in which objecthood appears; in language, as word, sound, rhythm, sentence, and style; and in thought, as the conceptual shaping of meaningful determination. In all these cases, the poietic designates the same ontological core: that which grasps does not remain external to what it grasps, but in the very act of grasping is shaped in accordance with the determination that acquires meaningful validity.

The concept of noetic-poietic-noematic activity therefore has a crucial function. It prevents intelligibility from being understood as a cold structure of meaning, as a pure act of apprehension, or as a relation between an already constituted being and an already constituted determination. Substance is not merely intelligible; it is plastic: real difference cannot acquire meaningful validity within its immanence without thereby determining and shaping its very being. It is therefore not merely non-indifferent to what affects it; its non-indifference means that the reception of difference is already a mode of its own transformation. Receptivity is therefore always already poiesis: to be affected means to be changed, shaped, redirected, and introduced into a new configuration of one’s own immediacy. In the deepest modality of this activity, the connection becomes stricter still: what is grasped does not remain merely a meaning toward which a being is directed, but is a determination that the being, in grasping it, simultaneously enacts in its own being. Receptivity, meaningful validity, and poietic self-shaping are therefore distinguishable only analytically; ontologically, they belong to one and the same event of plasticity.

In the thought experiment with the atoms, the poietic moment appears when we ask what it would mean for the collision, within the immanence of the affected atom, to be more than an externally induced change of state. It is not enough for the atom to change its trajectory, velocity, or some other physically describable determination; even a possible sensation, if it remained enclosed within mere self-affection, would still not be sufficient. For it to be possible to speak of authentic receptivity, the real difference that affects it would have to acquire at least the most meagre proto-noematic validity—the non-thetic “is”—in such a way that this validity would simultaneously be a new shaping of its own immediacy. The affected atom would not, therefore, first “register” the difference and then change because of it; its very reception of the difference would already be a determinate mode of its transformation. This is not yet consciousness, not representation, and not an articulated relation to the Other; but neither is it mere mechanics of external change. It is the minimal poietic moment of receptivity: the possibility that real difference, by acquiring immanent meaningful validity, in the same event transforms the mode of being of that which is affected.

From this it becomes clear why the concept of intentionality, however valuable it may be for understanding developed consciousness, cannot constitute the final ontological determination of this relation. Intentionality, in its most general phenomenological sense, says that consciousness is always consciousness of something; in doing so, it already presupposes a developed differentiation between the act and that toward which the act is directed. The ontology of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness, however, must descend further—to a modality in which the grasping of a determinate meaningful determination is not yet separable from its poietic enactment in being. In this most immediate form, that which truly is does not stand over against a determinate WHAT as though it were an already constituted object: in grasping this WHAT, it simultaneously shapes itself and is as that WHAT. The noetic, the poietic, and the noematic are here inseparable moments of one and the same ontological event. Consciousness is only one developed modality of this activity—the one in which the original inseparability differentiates itself into an explicit intentional relation between subject and objecthood. Prior to such consciousness there are unconscious natural, organic, bodily, and affective modalities of immanent intelligibility and self-shaping, from which intentionality, language, conceptual thought, and aesthetic forms of Being’s self-manifestation can develop only at higher levels.

15. Substance as Absolute Non-Indifference

If a rigidly materialist substance, in its ultimate determination, proves to be absolutely indifferent, then an ontology that seeks to explain the possibility of receptivity, meaning, and poietic self-shaping must begin from the contrary determination: substance is absolute non-indifference. This does not mean that, already in its most immediate modality, it possesses personal consciousness, will, intention, representation, or reflection. Non-indifference is ontologically deeper than all these developed forms. It means that what truly is cannot be conceived as a closed self-identity, powerless before difference, but rather as an immanence in which real difference can acquire validity and thereby participate in its own determination. Its deepest nature is therefore not relationless closure but the possibility of relation; not dead material fullness but differential receptivity; not an unintelligible substrate to which meaning is only subsequently added, but immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness, whose being already includes the possibility of being affected, determined, and poietically shaped by difference.

Absolute non-indifference means that what truly is is ontologically indifferent neither to its own immediacy nor to the real difference that affects it. Precisely for this reason, its lowest modalities need not be conscious, representational, or linguistic: non-indifference can exist as an unconscious and proto-noematic openness in which its own being and that which affects it are already not ontologically insignificant. Only through further differentiation does this originary structure assume increasingly developed forms. In life it manifests itself as organic receptivity, self-preservation, metabolism, and a form-giving response to real difference; in the living body, as sensibility and affective susceptibility; in consciousness, as intentional experience of objecthood; in language, as self-conscious meaningful articulation; and in speculative thought, as in-flective knowledge—thought’s attempt, in full awareness of its own activity, to repeat in concept and language the inner path by which Being shapes itself as determinate objecthood. These modalities are not reducible to one another, but they belong to the same ontological line: the increasingly developed manifestation of the absolute non-indifference of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

Substance, therefore, is not exhausted by the concept of matter insofar as matter is understood as absolute exteriority and ontological indifference. This does not mean that materiality should be abolished or dismissed as illusion: what truly is can manifest itself in bodily, natural, and physical forms—as organic tissue, a nervous system, a leaf, a crystal, a voice—and also in structures that physics describes in terms of energy, fields, and interactions. None of these modalities, however, is exhausted in bare materiality understood as an indifferent substrate. Every determinate form is a mode in which immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness differentiates itself, shapes itself, and discretely particularizes itself as a determinate WHAT, while remaining open to real difference and the possibility of further transformation. In the lowest modalities this activity can remain unconscious and proto-noematic; in life it becomes organic self-relation and receptivity; in consciousness it takes the form of an explicit relation to objecthood; and only in self-conscious and speculative modalities can one speak of a return to itself in a fuller sense. Materiality is therefore not the opposite of plasticity of is-ness, but one of the modes of its concretization—the mode in which what is acquires determinate form, duration, resistance, and manifest reality.

This is the deepest meaning of the thesis that substance is immanently intelligible. It is not intelligible merely because human thought can understand it; rather, thought can understand it because the possibility of meaningful determination belongs to the very mode of its being. Immanent intelligibility therefore does not designate a pre-given rational structure already embedded in reality, but the fact that what is is not mute before its own determinations and real differences: it can differentiate itself, open itself receptively, shape itself poietically, and acquire meaningful validity within its own immanence. Its non-indifference is the ontological condition of possibility for consciousness, understanding, and conceptual knowledge to emerge at all on more developed levels. If what is were at its foundation absolutely unintelligible and indifferent to its own determinations, thought would be left only to impose its categorial schemata upon it from without. But if intelligibility is immanent to Being itself, thought can become in-flective: it can attempt, through its own conceptual and linguistic movement, to bend itself toward the object and repeat within itself the inner path of its genesis.

At this point the rigidly materialist concept of substance reaches its own limit. It is not deep enough to explain receptivity, because it cannot derive the immanent relevance of real difference from absolute indifference; it is not plastic enough to explain poiesis, because a change of state is not yet the same as the self-shaping of being; it lacks the inwardness required to explain how real difference acquires meaningful and proto-noematic validity; and it lacks the self-relation required to explain how consciousness, language, and knowledge can arise from such a basis. Substance therefore cannot be exhausted by matter insofar as matter is understood as absolute exteriority, indifferent material fullness, or a mere bearer of changes. Its deeper ontological truth must be thought as living, pulsating, immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness—as a non-indifferent immanence capable of being affected by difference, of enabling difference to acquire meaningful validity, of shaping itself poietically through it and, in its more developed modalities, of bringing its own self-determining process to consciousness and self-knowledge.

16. From Atomic Collision to Cosmic and Organic Intelligibility

The thought experiment begins with the collision of two atoms, but its ontological implications cannot be confined to that extremely simplified scene. If it proves that not even the most minimal receptivity can be derived from absolute indifference, then the problem no longer concerns only the concept of the atomic event, but the entire image of reality that conceives nature as an ontologically mute ground from which life, meaning, and consciousness emerge only subsequently. Nature can then no longer be understood as a dead stage upon which, at some late moment, something appears that has no inner connection whatsoever with its own structure. It must be thought as a field of unconscious immanent intelligibility — not because nature already possesses consciousness, representation, or concept, but because its forms already belong to a mode of being in which differentiation, receptive openness, and poietic shaping are ontologically possible. Its forms are therefore not merely external arrangements of matter, but modalities in which immanent-intelligible plasticity of is-ness differentiates itself, concretizes itself, and acquires a determinate form of Being.

A birch leaf, the venation of a linden leaf, crystal structure, organic tissue, photosynthesis, animal sensibility, the nervous system, the human face, voice, and language — all this must be thought as different degrees of the self-shaping of absolutely non-indifferent Being. In the leaf there is no reflective consciousness, but there is an inner intelligibility of organization; in the organic body there is not necessarily conceptual articulation, but there is receptivity, the capacity to distinguish and respond to the other; in animal sensibility this receptivity assumes a more intense form of feeling and directedness; in the nervous system it acquires a complexity that enables the unification of a multitude of stimuli; in the human face, voice, and language self-shaping reaches an expression in which interiority can become present to another. Sound itself neither judges nor possesses a concept, but for that reason it is not a mere indifferent vibration: in it there are structure, measure, rhythm, difference, and poietic effect. Intelligibility is, accordingly, broader than thought if we understand thought in the narrow sense of reflective or conceptual consciousness. It is not a late addition to a previously mute and indifferent nature, but precisely that immanent possibility of distinguishing, organizing, receiving, and shaping from which thought can only then arise as its distinctive, self-conscious form.

Materialism can describe these forms externally: as chemical, physical, biological, and neurological processes. Such a description is not only legitimate but necessary, and its cognitive value is in no way called into question here. But it does not exhaust the ontological meaning of what is described. Photosynthesis is not merely a set of chemical reactions; it is a way in which life, without reflective consciousness of what it is doing, shapes itself in non-indifference toward light, incorporating it into its own preservation. The nervous system is not merely a network of excitations and their transmissions; it is a highly developed organ of receptivity, differentiation, and unification of what comes from the other. Language, finally, is not merely a system of communication nor a means of transmitting already formed meanings; it is that immediacy in which self-conscious plasticity acquires the possibility of uttering its own intelligibility, making it present to another and, in that utterance, to itself.

Such an extension of the concept of intelligibility must not become a romantic decoration of nature or an occasion to attribute to natural forms what does not belong to them. The leaf does not think, chlorophyll does not understand, the atom does not speak. But the absence of reflective consciousness does not entail the absence of intelligibility. This is precisely one of the key theses of the new ontology: there are forms of intelligibility that precede consciousness; there are forms of poiesis that precede the artist and every conscious act of creation; there are forms of receptivity that precede the nervous system in its developed, animal, and human form. This does not erase the differences between these levels but, on the contrary, makes it possible for them to be thought as different intensities and modes of the self-shaping of absolutely non-indifferent Being. Being is deeper than consciousness, but precisely for that reason consciousness does not arise from an ontological void: it becomes possible because intelligibility, receptivity, and the poietic power of shaping belong to its very structure.

For this reason, two Democritean atoms serve as an extreme negative example. They show what is lost ontologically when we conceive substance as a wholly indifferent plenitude, as something that is, yet bears within itself no possibility of receptivity, self-differentiation, or an inner relation to the other. By contrast, the actual world—the world of life, bodies, light, organic form, experience, and language—points to a far deeper ground: to a substance that is not bare materiality, but an immanent capacity for self-differentiation, receptivity, and formation. Such a substance is not subsequently animated by an external addition of consciousness, but already contains within its own structure the possibility of attaining, from the plane of unconscious intelligibility, ever more complex forms of non-indifference, all the way to experience, thought, and language.

17. The Relation to Contemporary Physics: A Critique of Metaphysics, Not Science

For the thought experiment to remain philosophically tenable, it must be made clear that it is neither an attack on contemporary physics nor an attempt to challenge its results from the standpoint of a speculative ontology. Contemporary physics does not begin from Democritean atoms conceived as small, solid, indivisible spheres moving through the void, nor can its conception of reality be reduced to such an image. It speaks of fields, quantum states, relations, symmetries, indeterminacies, energy, a vacuum that is not mere nothingness, and complex mathematical structures by means of which physical processes are described and predicted. In certain theoretical contexts, it also speaks of information, but this notion, too, has no univocal ontological meaning. All of this shows that the contemporary physical picture of the world is incomparably more complex than ancient atomism, and that identifying it with Democritus’ image of matter would be both scientifically and philosophically mistaken.

However, the philosophical problem remains untouched if all these concepts, however far removed from ancient atomism, are still interpreted within an ontology of indifferent externality. A field may be metaphysically construed merely as a more sophisticated form of that which remains without an inner relation to itself or to the other; information as a measurable difference without immanent validity; energy as a quantitatively determinable capacity for change or work; law as a description of the regularity according to which events unfold. None of these concepts, taken by itself, yet introduces receptivity, if receptivity is understood as the noetic activity through which the other, with which an immediacy enters into interaction, is translated into the dimension of meaning and thereby acquires its other-being as noema. It is therefore not enough to replace the atom with the field, the particle with the process, or matter with energy: a change in the fundamental vocabulary of physics need not entail a change in the underlying ontological presupposition. The decisive question remains the same: is the ground of the real conceived as non-indifferent in itself, capable, in its relation to the other, of noetically translating the other’s difference into the medium of meaning, or is it, despite the new language, still conceived as absolutely indifferent externality?

If physics is understood with methodological discipline, as the science of measurable structures, relations, and laws of nature, it is not the object of this critique. The problem arises only when, from the extraordinary success of such description, one infers the ontological claim that reality, in its ultimate truth, is exhausted by precisely what can be physically measured, mathematically formalized, and described in the third person. At that point, scientific method passes over into metaphysical interpretation, often without sufficient awareness that this transition has occurred at all. Materialism, therefore, is neither physics itself nor a necessary consequence of its results; it is one possible philosophical interpretation of what physics discovers. It is precisely this interpretation—and not scientific description as such—that the thought experiment calls into question.

We may therefore say: contemporary physics may be entirely adequate within its own domain while materialist ontology nevertheless remains insufficient. The physical description of collisions, interactions, and changes of state may be extraordinarily precise, but it does not by itself resolve the question of receptivity. Physical change is not the same as the noetic activity through which the other is translated into the dimension of meaning and thereby acquires its other-being as noema. Nor is mathematical structure, however complex and exact, by itself identical with the immanent validity of the other in the medium of meaning. Philosophy must therefore neither underestimate physics nor demand of it what physics, as physics, is not obliged to provide; but neither may it surrender to physical description the final word on the ontological concept of substance.

Such a delimitation enables the thought experiment to preserve its philosophical seriousness. It does not say to the physicist: your science is wrong. It addresses the metaphysician who invokes physics as a final ontology and says: your interpretation of substance as a ground indifferent in itself does not explain what it claims to be able to explain. If you wish to explain receptivity, you must show how, out of absolute indifference, there can arise a noetic activity in which the other is translated into the medium of meaning and acquires its other-being as noema; if you wish to explain consciousness, you must show how self-conscious non-indifference can arise from that which is in itself wholly without inner validity; if you wish to explain meaning, you must show how, out of ontological muteness, there can arise a dimension in which something can at all be valid as something. If you cannot show such a transition, then it is not enough to alter the description of the process—you must alter the very concept of substance.

18. Information, Difference, and Inner Validity

One contemporary way of softening hard materialism is to appeal to the concept of information. Instead of saying that reality is only matter, one says that it is structure, code, pattern, difference, or information. At first glance, this appears to be a considerable advance beyond the Democritean material fullness. Yet caution is required here as well. Information, if understood merely as a measurable difference between states, still does not resolve the problem of receptivity. Such a difference may be informative for an observer, may be registered by a measuring instrument, or articulated within a theoretical schema, without thereby showing that it in any way acquires immanent validity for the being itself of which we are speaking—that is, for the very form of immediacy that is the object of our inquiry. The external registration of a difference is not the same as its inner validity.

If two atoms occupy different positions or possess different energies, this difference may be informative for us. But does it in any way acquire inner validity in the atoms themselves? If it does not, then the concept of information remains determined exclusively from a third-person perspective. It may be invaluable for describing a system, but it does not thereby introduce receptivity or explain how the difference of the other becomes immanently valid for the very form of immediacy under consideration. In this sense, information may become merely a new version of the old externality: instead of material spheres, we now have patterns of difference, yet through these differences the other still acquires no other-being in the medium of meaning within that to which they pertain. They remain legible to an observer, measurable within a system, and articulated in theory, but they have not yet become inwardly valid for immediacy itself.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish external informativeness from immanent validity. External informativeness means that something can be a bearer of data for someone who reads, measures, or theoretically interprets it. Immanent validity, by contrast, means that a difference acquires inner validity within the very form of immediacy to which it pertains. Receptivity requires precisely the latter. If a change becomes relevant to an organism, it is no longer merely information in a neutral, external sense; it may be a signal, stimulus, call, danger, food, warmth, light, pain, or possibility. In that case, the difference is no longer merely registered externally, but acquires a meaningful articulation within the life of that being.

This distinction is particularly important for the critique of contemporary reductions of awareness to information processing. If we understand information merely formally, as a difference that produces a difference in the state of a system, the question still remains: does this difference exist only for the observer and the observer’s description, or does it acquire inner validity within the very form of immediacy of which we are speaking? If a system merely changes its physical state, we have thereby not yet explained receptivity or shown why that change would be information for it. If, however, the other in its difference is noetically translated within it into the medium of meaning and thereby acquires its other-being as noema, then we no longer have merely a formal processing of differences: noematic validity, receptivity, and, in its most immediate form, awareness have already been introduced. In doing so, we have already passed beyond the bounds of the rigidly materialist concept of substance and entered the domain of immanent intelligibility.

The concept of information can therefore be ontologically relevant only if its meaning is radically deepened. Information is not sufficient as a formal or measurable difference between states. For a difference to be more than external informativeness, the other, in and through its difference, must acquire immanent validity within the very form of immediacy: it must be noetically translated into the medium of meaning and thereby acquire its other-being as noema. At this point, information is no longer a purely technical concept or a mere designation for a formal difference; it already presupposes receptivity, that is, noetic-poietic-noematic activity in which the other becomes meaningfully present. But precisely then, we are no longer within the rigidly materialist concept of substance. We have crossed into an ontology of non-indifference, in which the possibility of meaning and of the most immediate form of awareness belongs to the very structure of that which is.

19. Degrees of Non-Indifference: From Proto-Relation to Language

One of the advantages of the thought experiment is that it allows us to distinguish degrees of non-indifference. We need not choose between two crude alternatives: between wholly indifferent materiality, in which nothing is valid for that which itself is, and developed human self-consciousness, in which awareness becomes present to itself. Between these extremes there opens an entire spectrum of forms of receptivity and awareness. The most immediate among them would be proto-relation: a minimal noetic activity in which the other, precisely as different, acquires immanent validity and its meaningful other-being as noema, although the awareness operative in this relation is not yet aware of itself. On this basis, increasingly developed forms of non-indifference can be distinguished: the simplest natural forms of receptive organization, organic metabolism, vegetal openness to light and water, animal sensibility, bodily affectivity, intentional awareness, linguistic articulation, and, finally, speculative knowledge.

This scale should not be understood as a simple linear evolution, but as a sequence of increasingly rich ways in which immanent intelligibility becomes concrete and takes form. A plant does not possess animal sensibility in the strict sense, but it does possess organic receptivity: light, water, warmth, and other differences are not wholly external to its life, but enter into the very manner of its self-maintenance and formation. In the animal, receptivity acquires more intense forms of awareness — orientation, pain, fear, attraction, seeking, habit, and various forms of memory — although it need not yet attain a reflective concept or awareness of itself as awareness. In the human form of being, receptivity can be articulated in language, concept, reflection, and self-consciousness, up to the possibility of speculative thought in which Being, through its own self-formation, becomes present to itself in thought. Each more developed form does not discard the preceding modalities of non-indifference, but transforms them within itself and incorporates them into a new organization of meaning.

In this way, both reductive materialism and that crude form of panpsychism which would indiscriminately ascribe developed psychical subjectivity to every form of being are avoided. We do not claim that every form of Being possesses representation, judgment, concept, or self-consciousness; but neither do we claim that awareness arises as a miracle from a previously absolutely unreceptive and ontologically mute materiality. We maintain that there are different degrees and modalities of non-indifference, and with them different forms of awareness. In their most immediate manifestations, awareness is not yet present to itself: the other already acquires immanent validity and its other-being in the medium of meaning, but the noetic activity is not yet itself what it is aware of. In this precise sense, we may speak of “unconscious” Nature — not as Nature devoid of awareness, but as an awareness akin to sleep, open to the other yet not awakened to itself. In language, this relation assumes a radically more developed form: non-indifference no longer merely translates the other noetically into the medium of meaning, but also utters it, names it, remembers it, communicates it, and conceptually transforms it.

This is important for the very concept of substance. Substance is neither a uniform mass nor a dead ground to which increasingly complex properties are subsequently added, but immanently intelligible plasticity whose mode of being is differentiated self-formation. Its unity does not abolish the differences between modalities and degrees of non-indifference; on the contrary, it manifests itself precisely through their differences. To be a leaf, to be an animal, to be a human being, to be a word, to be a concept — these are not different realities grafted onto the same dead ground, but different ways in which the same non-indifferent substance takes form, acquiring ever richer modalities of receptivity, awareness, self-relation, and meaning.

In this sense, the thought experiment with the atoms does not end in an abstract negation of materialism. It opens the possibility of a positive map of the different modalities of Being’s self-formation. If the ground of reality must be thought as immanently intelligible, then it is necessary to show how this intelligibility becomes concrete through different degrees and forms of non-indifference, from the most immediate receptivity to increasingly developed forms of awareness, self-relation, language, and concept. Only then does critique grow into ontology. Critique shows: indifferent matter is not sufficient. Ontology must take a further step and show how that which is takes form as a multiplicity of ever richer modalities of non-indifference, up to language and speculative thought, in which Being reaches the possibility of knowing its own intelligibility as its own.

20. The Hegelian Background: Substance as Subject and the Limit of Materialism

The thought experiment has a profound Hegelian background, although its ontological trajectory need not be reduced to Hegel’s system. Hegel’s thesis that substance must be thought as subject expresses the decisive thought that the ground of reality cannot be understood as a dead substratum or an inert bearer of properties. If substance is thought only as that which passively undergoes change, then negativity, self-relation, inner differentiation, and the possibility of knowledge remain unexplained. In this sense, Hegel’s concept of substance as subject breaks with the representation of the real as an ontologically mute substrate. The truth of the real is not mere subsistence, but a process in which that which is enters into relation with difference, transforms itself, and, in its more developed forms, can attain a relation to itself.

Materialist substance falls short of this Hegelian thought. It can be a bearer of changes, but not of a reflexive relation to its own change; it can be the ground of interactions, but not a living process of self-determination. Democritus’s two atoms therefore represent the antithesis of substance as subject: they exist, but their existence is not for them; they change, but change remains merely an external determination of their state and acquires no inner validity; they enter into relations, but these relations do not become a moment of their own inner determinacy. They are substance without subject, being without self-relation, happening without an event that would in any way be valid for the very participants in that happening.

Hegel’s concept of negativity helps to clarify this difference further. Negativity in Hegel is not a mere “no,” but the power of differentiation, of positing otherness, and of return through it. For something to be determinate, it must bear difference within its own determinacy; for it to be receptive, the difference of the other must acquire immanent validity within it; for it to be subject, the relation to otherness must be able to become a moment of its relation to itself. The materialist atom, however, possesses only external difference: it is different from the other atom, but this difference does not become its inner determinacy, nor does it relate to that difference as to something valid for it. It can therefore participate in an external relation, but it cannot be the bearer of an inner negativity from which self-relation could arise. In this sense, the rigidly materialist atom cannot provide a sufficient ontological ground for subjectivity.

In this sense, the concept of immanent intelligibility can be understood as a deepening and ontological extension of Hegel’s thought of substance as subject. It emphasizes that the possibility of self-relation is not limited to the logical-conceptual sphere, but is rooted in a deeper field of receptive, poietic, bodily, organic, and linguistic modalities of non-indifference. Substance can attain subjectivity only insofar as, at its very ground, it is not absolutely indifferent, that is, insofar as the possibility of differentiation, receptivity, and a meaningful relation to the other belongs to its very structure. But this non-indifference is not identical with developed self-consciousness: it encompasses the whole field of different modalities of awareness and self-relation, from the most immediate natural forms in which awareness is not yet present to itself, to language, concept, and speculative knowledge, in which Being can attain knowledge of its own intelligibility.

The thought experiment therefore does not abandon Hegel; rather, it turns his fundamental critique of dead substance against rigid materialism and at the same time extends it ontologically. From Hegel it takes the demand that the truth of substance cannot be a dead ground external to itself; the experiment with the atoms shows why: from an absolutely unreceptive and non-indifferent ground, the emergence of receptivity, meaning, and awareness cannot be explained. The new ontology takes the next step: substance must be thought as immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness, for only such a ground can bear within itself the possibility of different modalities of self-formation — Nature, life, body, awareness, language, and concept — up to speculative knowledge in which its own intelligibility can become present to itself.

21. Possible Objections and Replies

The first objection runs: the collision of atoms need not exist for the atoms themselves in order to be real. The answer is: correct. The thought experiment neither denies the reality of the physical event in the third person nor calls into question the objectivity of the change of state that occurs in the collision. It shows something else: a reality describable exclusively from the third-person perspective is not sufficient to explain the emergence of receptivity. If everything that exists is exhausted in external relations and changes of state that in no way acquire immanent validity for the very forms of immediacy that participate in them, then we still do not possess an ontological ground from which receptivity could be understood. The problem, therefore, is not whether the collision occurred, but whether the difference of the other in that event acquires inner validity for that which is affected by it.

The second objection runs: complexity solves the problem. When systems become sufficiently complex, awareness emerges. The answer is: complexity undoubtedly belongs among the conditions of developed forms of awareness, but merely invoking it does not yet explain the transition from absolute unreceptivity to receptivity. The multiplication of units, relations, feedback loops, and levels of organization can produce ever more complex patterns of behaviour and changes of state; but if the ontological ground is from the outset determined as completely indifferent to the other, it remains unexplained how the difference of the other acquires immanent validity for the system itself at all. Complexity can develop and transform possibilities that belong to the structure of the real, but it is not itself an answer to the question of how a qualitatively new ontological determination — receptivity — emerges. If it is claimed that receptivity arises only at a certain threshold of complexity, then it is precisely that transition, rather than complexity itself, that requires explanation.

The third objection runs: the introduction of immanent intelligibility leads to panpsychism. The answer is: only if panpsychism is defined so broadly that even the most minimal form of awareness is already called psychical subjectivity. This text does not ascribe to every form of being a representation, feeling, experiential self, concept, or self-consciousness. It claims something more precise: where receptivity exists in the strict sense, there also exists a minimal noetic activity in which the other, in its difference, acquires immanent validity and its other-being as noema. Such awareness is not yet developed subjectivity, nor awareness of itself; it can be the most immediate, non-reflective modality of non-indifference. The ontological boundary therefore does not run between completely dead matter and already constituted consciousness, but between absolute indifference and that minimal receptivity in which the other first becomes valid for immediacy itself.

The fourth objection runs: the concept of immanent intelligibility is not empirically verifiable. The answer is: it is not an empirical hypothesis to be confirmed or refuted by experiment in the physical sense, but an ontological category introduced in order to explain the possibility of receptivity, meaning, and awareness. Its justification is therefore not measured by immediate experimental verification, but by conceptual necessity, internal coherence, and explanatory power. The question is whether such a concept succeeds in explaining what rigid materialism leaves unexplained: how one passes from a mere change of state to the immanent validity of the other, from external interaction to receptivity, from objective difference to meaning that holds for immediacy itself.

The fifth objection runs: all this merely renames the problem. The answer to this objection depends on the further derivation of the ontology itself. If immanent intelligibility remains merely a name for what materialism fails to explain, then the objection is justified: with new terminology, the problem would merely have been displaced, not resolved. But if the inner structure of immanent intelligibility, the necessity of its determinations, and the manner in which it becomes concrete through different modalities of receptivity, life, body, awareness, language, and in-flective knowledge are shown, then this is no longer a matter of a label, but the beginning of a new ontological architecture. Precisely for this reason, this text remains a working version: its fundamental thesis must not merely be declared, but must be conceptually derived through necessary transitions among its own determinations.

22. Implications for the Concept of In-Flection and for a Future Ontology

The thought experiment with two Democritean atoms leads directly to the concept of in-flection. If reality is immanently intelligible at its ground, then thought need not externally impose conceptual forms upon a dead content indifferent to them. It can attempt, in its own movement, to repeat the inner path by which objectivity takes shape. In-flection designates precisely such a speculative bending of thought into the immanence of the object: thought does not halt at its external givenness, but strives to follow the manner of its emergence, differentiation, and formation, until the object shows itself as a discrete particularization of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness.

In relation to materialism, in-flection has a particular critical function. It refuses to accept the object as mere material givenness whose truth would be exhausted in externally describable properties and relations. It asks: what modality of non-indifference is realized in it? What inner differentiation determines its concrete form? In what way does the other, in its difference, acquire — if it does — immanent validity within it? How is its immediacy maintained, changed, and formed through its relation to the other? In this sense, in-flection does not approach the object as an external content merely to be described or classified, but attempts to reproduce in thought its inner path of determination, differentiation, and formation.

This is especially important for the future ontology of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness. It must not remain at the grand assertion that everything is plasticity, but must conceptually derive the inner architecture of its different modalities. Indifferent matter does not thereby represent the first positive stage of this development, but rather a negative limiting figure whose insufficiency shows the necessity of changing the very concept of substance. Only after this break can the necessary transitions be articulated through minimal receptivity and noetic-poietic-noematic activity, poietic self-formation, life, body, awareness, language, and speculative knowledge. These moments must not merely be arranged one after another; each must conceptually show why the next becomes possible or necessary from the preceding one. Only then will plasticity of is-ness avoid the danger of formalism and cease to be a general designation for everything that is, becoming a developed ontological category capable of differentiating its own modalities from within.

We must therefore continually return to the thought experiment. It is simple, but not primitive: its force lies precisely in the fact that, from the radically simplified image of two material fullnesses, it raises a question that reaches the very ground of ontology — can any real non-indifference arise from absolute indifference? If it proves that it cannot, then it is not enough to alter the description of the process or increase the complexity of the system; the very concept of substance must be changed. And if substance can no longer be thought as an absolutely indifferent material ground, then the entire metaphysical architecture that attempts to derive the real from such a ground must be reconsidered.

Finally, this thought experiment also opens the path toward language. If the immanent intelligibility of Nature, already in its most immediate modalities, manifests itself as awareness that is not yet present to itself, then one can follow the way in which non-indifference acquires increasingly developed forms of self-relation and self-formation. In this respect, language is a distinctive immediacy in which intelligibility does not remain merely immanently valid, but can be uttered, articulated, and made present to itself. It is not simply a sign for an already completed thought, but a poietic form in which awareness can express, repeat, and recognize as its own its noetic-poietic-noematic activity. In this sense, the path from atomic collision to language is not an arbitrary metaphor, but a speculative trajectory through different modalities of non-indifference, from the most minimal receptivity to the self-conscious articulation of meaning.

23. The Concluding Formula of the Thought Experiment

The thought experiment can be summarized in several successive steps. First, let us imagine two purely material fullnesses, indifferent to one another. Second, let us allow their collision and the objective change in their states. Third, let us note that the collision can be wholly real as a physical event and exhaustively describable from a third-person perspective, without thereby having become an event that is in any way valid for the atoms themselves. Fourth, let us attempt to introduce receptivity within the same rigidly materialist concept of substance and note that in doing so we no longer add merely a new property, but a qualitatively new ontological determination. Fifth, let us distinguish physical change of state from receptivity: to be changed is not the same as to receive the other in its difference as immanently valid. Sixth, let us determine receptivity as minimal noetic activity in which the other, in its difference, acquires immanent validity and its other-being as noema. Seventh, let us conclude that such activity cannot be derived from a ground determined as absolute indifference. It thereby becomes necessary to change the very concept of substance and to think it as immanently intelligible, non-indifferent plasticity of is-ness.

From this follows the fundamental thesis: substance cannot be understood as absolutely indifferent matter, because receptivity cannot be derived from such an ontological ground. If there is in the real even the most minimal form of receptivity — that is, a relation in which the other, precisely in its difference, acquires immanent validity for that with which it enters into relation — then the ground of reality cannot be absolutely indifferent. This non-indifference is not a property subsequently added to substance, but belongs to the very manner of its being. Substance must therefore be thought as immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness: as a ground capable not only of external difference and interaction, but of receptivity, inner differentiation, the noetic validity of the other, and poietic self-formation.

The noetic, the poietic, and the noematic designate non-independent moments of a single unified activity of receptivity. The noetic moment is the activity by which the other, precisely in its difference, is translated into the medium of meaning; the noematic moment is the other-being that it acquires in this activity as noema. But this transition is not a bare registration of an already encountered determination: it is simultaneously poietic, because the meaningful presence of the other is formed and produced in the very act of receptivity, while immediacy itself takes shape through its relation to the other. Noetic-poietic-noematic activity is therefore not an assemblage of separate functions, but the unified inner structure of immanent intelligibility. It is neither a psychological fact nor a subsequent capacity of an already constituted subject, but the ontological manner in which non-indifferent plasticity of is-ness relates to the other, forms its meaningful other-being, and through this relation forms itself.

Materialist ontology remains insufficient insofar as it attempts to derive receptivity from that which is in itself absolutely unreceptive. Likewise insufficient are those epistemological models that conceive awareness as an already existing space of contents, rather than as a living noetic-poietic-noematic activity in which the other first acquires its meaningful presence. Against both reductions, the ontology of immanently intelligible plasticity of is-ness proceeds from the thesis that to be means to be non-indifferent: to be capable of the other, in its difference, acquiring immanent validity, while one’s own immediacy takes shape through that relation. This does not mean that everything is self-conscious, subjective in the developed sense, or linguistically articulated; it means that everything that truly is belongs to one and the same field of immanent intelligibility, whose modalities extend from the most immediate forms of awareness, which are not yet present to themselves, to self-consciousness, language, the concept, and speculative knowledge.

Thus, the two atoms of Democritus are not merely an ancient motif, but a mirror in which the limit of an entire metaphysics of substance reveals itself. If we retain them as absolutely indifferent material fullnesses, we cannot explain from their ontological concept how a physical event becomes an event that is valid for something, nor how the world can become meaningfully present for any form of awareness. If, however, we ascribe actual receptivity to them, we have already abandoned the rigidly materialist concept of substance, since we have introduced a qualitatively new ontological determination: the possibility that the other, in its difference, acquires immanent validity. And if receptivity requires such immanent non-indifference, then the way opens toward a new concept of substance — substance as immanently intelligible, non-indifferent, noetic-poietic-noematic, and self-forming plasticity of is-ness.

A Thought Experiment: collision Democritus`s atoms

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