1. Grounded Physical-Ontological Categories behind Physics

Grounding can be of various levels and grades. I speak of grounding all sorts of concepts, procedure principles, procedure methods, and theories in any system of thought and science. It is unnecessary in this context to discuss the grounding of highly derivative concepts that occur much later in theories than those that appear while founding them with best-grounded foundations. I go directly to the case of what should be called the most Categorial concepts behind physics, on which physics is grounded.

These Categorial concepts cannot be merely from within physics but should be directly related to and facilitating physics in as many of its aspects as possible. The success of foundational Categories consists in that they serve to ground as many aspects as possible of the particular science or system. Concepts strictly and exclusively physical or generally scientific cannot be as useful as notions from beyond in order to serve as Categories. Evidently, this is because no scientific discipline or system can be grounded on itself and hence on its own concepts. This is clearly also part of the epistemological and ontological implications of the work of Godel.

Grounded ontological Categories are such that they are inevitably and exhaustively grounded in the To Be of Reality-in-total as the only exhaustive implications of To Be. All other Categories, as far as possible, must be derivative of the most primary Categories. The more the number of Categories within the Categorial system that do not derive from the primary Categories the worse for the self-evidence of the science or system within it.

Grounding is exhaustive in the sense that the Categories that ground all physics need nothing else to be a concept than the To Be of Reality-in-total. To Be is the source of the Categories. It happens to be that there are two such Categories that are inevitably and exhaustively grounded. I call them Extension and Change. Clarifications of their meaning, ontological significance, and epistemological and physical implications and follow.

As I said, preferably grounding must be on the surest notion of all, which is existence. I prefer to term it To Be. As far as thought, feeling, and sensation are concerned, To Be is a notion in al of them. But principally To Be must belong to the whole of Reality, and not to a few things. If anything and/or all processes of Reality are existent, then what exist are the parts of existent Reality. The first minimum guarantee hereof should be that existence should be non-vacuous. Non-vacuous signifies that each possesses or contains whatever is possible within its existence in the given measurementally spatio-temporal context (which, as shall soon be clear, belong ontologically to the Extension-Change-wise existence of things).

3. Definitions of Universals, Extension-Change, Causality, and Unit Process

Even the minimum realism in thought, feeling, and sensation has for its principal conditions (1) the ontological primacy of universal qualities / natures that belong to groups of entities (processes), where the groups are also called natural kinds in the analytic tradition, and then (2) the ultimate simplicity and indivisibility of the universal characteristics that pertain to all existents. Contrary to the infinite divisibility of existent matter-energy, universals as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations (of togethernesses of unit Processes) are ontologically ideal universals, and hence indivisible. These universals are ideal not because of our idealisation of the characteristics, but instead because they are the general characteristics of the natural kinds to which each existent belongs. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that ontological universals are not our idealizations.

The properties of things are built out of these simple ontological universals in the natural kinds. The vague reflections of simple ontological universals within our minds are conceptually connotative universals, which are conceptual ideals. And their linguistic reflections in minds and all kinds of symbolic instruments are denotative universals.

Connotative and denotative universals are epistemological universals, formed epistemically from the little contact that minds have with the phenomena (“showings-themselves”) from some layers of processual objects from out there. The properties of existent processual things (matter-energy particulars) are vaguely reflected in minds and languages through the connotative and denotative instrumentalization of concepts in order to reflect the things via phenomena in terms of the data created by minds out of them. Any theory that permits ontological primacy to epistemological universals is one of a range of theories yielding primacy to the perceiving mind over the perceived objects. This is anathema in any scientific or philosophical science, because things are not vacua.

Non-vacuous existence implies that existents are extended. This is one of the most important characteristics of existents. Extension implies having parts, compositionality. Any extended existent’s parts impart impact to some others. This is Change. Only extended existents can exert impacts on any other. As a result, the object that exerts impact gets in itself some impact within, which is nothing but the proof that an impact by one extended part implies movements and impact formation by its parts too, as a result of the overall impact formation in question which contains the inner parts’ impact formation within. The latter need not always have its effects merely within the parts but instead also outwards.

Extension and Change are the highest, deepest, and most general characteristics of all existents. Interestingly, existence in Extension-Change is itself the process that we have so far named causation. Hence, anything non-vacuously existent has Extension and Change not separately but together. This is the meaning of Universal Causality. Physics cannot dispense with this pre-scientific universal Law. No more shall quantum physicists or scientists from other disciplines tell us that quantum physics has some sort of non-causality within! Any causal unit of existents in which the causal part and the effect part may be termed a process. Processuality is yet another important characteristic of existents, but we formulate it as Process, which represents the matter-energy units that there can be.

By this have clearly been set up three physical-ontological Categories of physics: Extension, Change, Causality, and Process. Space and time are merely epistemic categories. They cannot characterize existent processes. Ontological universals, as the characteristics of existent matter-energy conglomerations, are of togethernesses of unit Processes. Ontological universals are therefore ontologically ideal universals belonging (pertaining) to some natural kinds. The Categories as ontological universals belong to Reality-in-total, and not merely some natural kinds.