Austere (or “Blobject”) Monism

The Ontology of the One Without Parts and the Fiction of the ‘Concrete’

By Bodhangkur

Abstract

Austere Monism—also known as Blobjectivism—posits that there exists only one concrete particular, the total world or “blobject,” and that all apparent multiplicity is an illusion of linguistic and pragmatic partition. Developed by Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč, this doctrine revives the ancient monistic intuition of unity but recasts it in the minimalist vocabulary of analytic metaphysics. Yet the central term—concrete—on which their claim rests is itself left undefined, indeed incoherent within the theory’s own logic. When examined through its etymology, its current meanings, and its operational implications, concrete dissolves into a semantic residue without referent. This essay reconstructs the architecture of austere monism, analyses its reliance on “concreteness,” and demonstrates how this reliance undermines the very claim of ontological singularity it seeks to defend.

1. The Monist’s Ambition: One Reality, No Parts

The composers of the Upanishads as well as philosophers from Parmenides to Spinoza have proposed that the multiplicity of beings is an illusion generated by human cognition. Horgan and Potrč’s austere monism is a late analytic manifestation of this same impulse. It asserts:

There exists exactly one concrete particular—the world as a whole—and nothing else.

All the entities we speak of—chairs, stars, electrons, minds—are merely regions or patterns within the one world-object. Multiplicity is epistemic, not ontological.

This position distinguishes itself from priority monism (Schaffer), which still permits parts but assigns priority to the whole. The blobjectivist denies even the existence of parts. The cosmos is one seamless blob of being: internally variegated but fundamentally undivided.

The question, then, is simple: what does “concrete” mean in this context?
And—more decisively—can it mean anything coherent once all plurality is denied?

2. The Historical and Semantic Weight of “Concrete”

2.1 Etymology

The English concrete stems from Latin concrētus, the past participle of concrescere—to grow together, condense, coalesce.
It implies formation through aggregation—the coming-together of previously distinct elements (or quanta) into a tangible unity. A concrete mass is literally a grown-together thing.

2.2 Current meanings

In modern usage, concrete denotes:

1. Material solidity—what is tangible, embodied, and spatially present (e.g. concrete wall).

2. Particularity—as opposed to abstraction (“a concrete example”).

3. Philosophical concreteness—that which is spatio-temporally located and causally efficacious (as opposed to abstract, non-causal entities such as numbers).

Thus, every sense of concrete presupposes aggregation, locality, and interaction—that is, the very features that generate difference.

3. The Contradiction in the Austere Monist Use of “Concrete”

The blobject is proclaimed to be concrete because it is supposed to be the ultimate real—the world itself.
But under the standard criteria, this is incoherent.

(a) No aggregation

If there are no parts, there can be no “growing-together.” The etymological content of concrete (concrescere) is violated. The blobject has not grown together; it simply is.

(b) No locality

If there is only one entity that is spacetime, it is not in spacetime and therefore cannot occupy or exclude any region. Concreteness, understood as spatial occupation, collapses.

(c) No causal contrast

Causality presupposes relata. A totality without parts cannot interact with anything. Thus, it cannot meet the causal efficacy criterion that defines concreteness in analytic philosophy.

The result: the term concrete, within austere monism, becomes a placeholder without content.
It functions rhetorically—meant to assure the reader that the monist whole is not an abstract idea—but it cannot fulfil its own descriptive role.

4. The Rhetoric of Concreteness: A Verbal Anchor for the Void

Austere monism depends upon “concreteness” as a semantic anchor: without it, the “blobject” would collapse into pure conceptual abstraction.
Yet because the word is undefined except by negation (“not abstract”), its use becomes purely honorific—an assertion of reality without reference.

This rhetorical function is transparent:

· Concrete is the blobjectivist’s way of insisting that “the One really exists” while offering no criteria by which existence could be tested.

· It reassures, but it does not explain.

Thus, the blobject’s “concreteness” is nominal, not ontological. It is the philosophical equivalent of painting the word REAL on the surface of a cloud.

5. The Logical Consequences

5.1 Semantic self-cancellation

If “concrete” implies boundedness, spatial occupancy, and causal relation, then to apply it to an unbounded, relation-less whole is to invert its meaning.
The blobject becomes “the concrete” only by violating the very conditions that make concreteness intelligible.

5.2 Empirical emptiness

A “world” that cannot be contrasted with anything cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed.
It predicts nothing, forbids nothing, and hence does not function as an explanatory hypothesis but as a linguistic totalisation.

5.3 Ontological inertia

Once all internal and external differentiation is denied, the blobject cannot do anything. It has no dynamics, only description.
Thus, the doctrine describes the most inert possible universe—a totality that is self-identical but without internal procedure.

6. Illustrative Analogies

The Slime Mould Analogy

The slime mould (Physarum polycephalum) is a continuous organism without fixed organs, capable of adaptive behaviour. It is one blob with internal differentiations.
Were the blobject like this, it would exhibit causal flow among regions. But Horgan and Potrč explicitly deny the existence of parts. Their blobject cannot even differentiate pseudopodia. The “living blob” analogy fails: the monistic blob is a corpse.

The Ocean Analogy

The ocean can be called one body of water with local waves. Yet its unity arises precisely from fluid interaction of its parts. Remove the parts and the motion ceases.
The blobject, stripped of relational currents, freezes into concept.

7. Comparison with Alternative Monisms

Ontology	What is Basic	Relation to “Concrete”	Status of Parts
Atomism	Particles	Concrete via spatio-temporal and causal individuation	Fundamental
Priority Monism (Schaffer)	Whole	Concrete because composed of interacting parts	Derivative
Austere Monism	Whole (no parts)	Vaguely called concrete, but undefined	Denied
Procedure Monism (Finn)	Universal rule-set	Concrete = contactual; real where quantised interactions occur	Real as bounded iterations

From Finn’s standpoint, concrete must denote contact-ability—the capacity to generate measurable (meaning real or ‘hard’) interactions.
Only bounded iterations, not the rule-set itself, can be concrete.
Hence, the world as totality—which has no outside and thus no possible contact—is non-concrete by definition.

8. Toward a Procedural Redefinition of the Concrete

If “concrete” historically means “grown-together,” compounded (as the Shakyamuni first stated) the procedural analogue would be:

Concrete = contactually coherent.
That which emerges as a bounded unity through the iterative interplay of constraints and exchanges.

In this sense:

· A photon is concrete, as an event of energy transfer.

· A human organism is concrete, as a self-organising loop of contact events.

· The universe as whole is non-concrete, for it never contacts anything beyond itself.

The blobject is thus not concrete but pre-concrete—the abstract set of all possible contacts, a procedural domain awaiting instantiation.

9. Philosophical Ramifications

The misuse of “concrete” in austere monism generates three cascading failures:

1. Conceptual failure: The theory’s key term negates itself; concreteness cannot be ascribed to a non-interactive totality.

2. Epistemic failure: Without definable concreteness, the theory loses contact with experience and observation.

3. Ontological failure: By stripping concreteness of its constitutive meaning—local cohesion through interaction—the theory abolishes the very mechanism by which being acquires reality.

Thus, the blobject is ontologically hollow: a conceptual zero wrapped in the rhetoric of solidity.

10. Conclusion: The Abstractness of the “Concrete”

Etymology, semantics, and procedure converge on one verdict:
Horgan and Potrč’s use of concrete is a category mistake elevated to principle.
The Latin concrētus—grown together—implies plurality in process;
modern philosophy’s “concrete” implies spatial-temporal and causal articulation.
But the blobject denies plurality, locality, and causation alike.

Hence, its “concreteness” is verbal camouflage—an attempt to lend the authority of the tangible to a notion that is, by its own definition, untouchable.

Where austere monism proclaims “there is one concrete particular,” the rigorous response must be:

“If there is no contact, there is no concreteness.
The blobject is not the concrete world but the abstract idea of worldliness.”

From the Procedure Monism perspective, reality is not an undivided blob but the ongoing quantised contact through which existence becomes real and identifiable.
Only what touches is concrete. The rest—however grandly conceived—is only a name.

In sum:
Austere (or “blobject”) Monism offers the most radical ontological economy imaginable—but it spends its last coin on a counterfeit. Its “concrete” is etymologically false, semantically void, and procedurally inert. What remains is a metaphysical slogan: one blob pretending to be real.

The etymology of ‘concrete’

Procedure Monism

The druid said: “He’s a more flexible blob”

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