[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/) # The Original Sin of Dualism What if Epistemology and Ontology are the Same Thing? What if Models are Reality Organizing Reality? ## Details **Authors** Cabrera, Derek; Cabrera, Laura **Year** 2026 **Publisher** Journal of Systems Thinking **Kind of work** article **Discipline** Philosophy **Secondary disciplines** Systems Science, Cognitive Science **Reading level** technical [Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.54120/jost.v26i1.dc6eost6) 10.54120/jost.v26i1.dc6eost6 ## In authors' words ### Abstract What if epistemology and ontology are not two different things? What if models are reality organizing reality? Philosophy repeatedly draws the same basic line: mind/body, mind/nature, model/reality, epistemology/ontology. These distinctions are useful for talking, but they become misleading when treated as evidence that reality is divided into fundamentally different kinds. O-Theory starts from a simpler claim: thinking is the organization of information into meaning or mental models, M = I.O, where the organizational operator is O = DSRP-484. If the same organizational primitives also characterize reality, then R = I.O. The critical point is that the O on both sides is the same. Mind is therefore not a special substance standing outside reality and attempting to represent it. Mind is one organized part of reality interacting with and modeling other organized parts of reality. More strongly, if reality is recursively composed of information-organizing systems, R = M1, M2, ..., Mn, with each Mi = Ii.O, then what we call "mind" is one local manifestation of a process occurring throughout reality. In that sense, M = R modeling R. This reframes the classical mind/body, mind/nature, model/reality, and epistemology/ontology problems as variations of the same mistaken dualism: a useful distinction within one reality mistaken for a division between different kinds of reality. O-Theory therefore does not propose a bridge between mind and world. It proposes that the apparent divide is explanatory, while the deeper unity lies in the shared organizational structure. ### What they set out to do (purpose) Argues that the mind-body, mind-nature, model-reality and epistemology-ontology splits are four versions of one mistake, and that O-Theory dissolves them rather than bridging them. The target is not dualism as a doctrine but the move that grants a useful distinction too much ontological weight. ### How they did it (methods) A formal argument rather than a study. Thinking is defined minimally as organizing information, T is identical to organizing information, with the process separated from its product: T(I; O) yields M, so a model is not information alone but organized information, M = I.O. The explanatory burden is placed on the organizational operator, O = DSRP-484. The same form is then asserted of reality, R = I.O, and the two are joined by the claim that the O on both sides is the same operator. Reality is treated as recursively composed of such systems, R = the set of M1 through Mn, each Mi = Ii.O, which yields M = R modeling R. The paper draws its empirical support from cited work rather than new data, and is careful about what each source can carry. ### What they found (results) If the same organizational operator characterizes both mind and material reality, the apparent divide between them is explanatory scaffolding rather than a difference in kind. The authors state the consequence directly: "Epistemology is what ontology looks like when one part of reality is organizing information about another part," and "Mind is what reality looks like when one part of it is modeling another." They set a minimum bar for what counts as a modeler, so that the claim does not collapse into panpsychism: a modeler must differentially register information about its environment, embody those differences in its own state, and have those state differences constrain its subsequent interaction. Mere physical change is not enough, and consciousness is not required. They also mark the position off from panpsychism, neutral monism, and process philosophy, and state the falsification condition: if some form of organization in cognition or reality requires structural primitives outside DSRP-484, or if DSRP-484 fails to account for an observed organizational structure, the universality claim fails. The Love-Reality Loop is reinterpreted along the way, as describing the recursive dynamics of one world rather than a bridge between two. ## Commentary ### In short Derek and Laura Cabrera argue that the split between knowing and being is not a real division but an artifact of treating a useful distinction as a boundary, and that the same organizational operator runs on both sides of it. ### In more detail The paper's move is to take a claim O-Theory already makes about thinking and apply it symmetrically. If a mental model is information organized by DSRP-484, and if reality is organized by the same primitives, then the operator is shared and the difference between mind and world is a difference in scale, recursion and capacity rather than in kind. The authors anticipate the obvious objection, which is that O-Theory's own Love-Reality Loop diagram puts mind on one side and reality on the other and so looks like the dualism it criticizes. Their answer is that the picture is explanatory scaffolding, written for readers whose language already splits knower from known, and that the unity is in the operator rather than the diagram. They are also careful about their evidence. The qubit work they cite was not testing O-Theory, and they say so explicitly, keeping direct tests and independent convergent findings as separate classes of support rather than blending them. ### Response This is the ontological statement the containment runs were quietly resting on. Those papers ask whether a formalism's organization falls inside the DSRP-484 closure; this one says why that question is worth asking, since if the operator is the same on both sides then a modeling language failing to reach a structure is a fact about the language rather than about reality. Two things make the record more useful than a position paper. The paper names its falsifier in the same terms the runs use, one necessary organizational structure that DSRP-484 cannot generate, so the philosophical claim and the empirical program share a failure condition. And the minimum bar for a modeler does real work, because without it the claim that reality is made of modelers reads as panpsychism, which the authors explicitly reject. The caveat is that the argument's weight rests on cited convergence rather than on anything established here, so the record should be read alongside the studies it points to rather than as evidence in its own right. **Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P Formal proof or model ## Questions it bears on - Q3. [Does this organization (O) exist in the mind, and in what minds produce?](https://dsrpevidence.org/question/completeness-mind) - Q4. [Does this organization (O) exist in reality?](https://dsrpevidence.org/question/completeness-reality) - Q5. [Does the same organization (O) hold across every domain and scale?](https://dsrpevidence.org/question/scale-generality) **How to cite this** Cabrera, Derek; Cabrera, Laura (2026). The Original Sin of Dualism: What if Epistemology and Ontology are the Same Thing? What if Models are Reality Organizing Reality?. Journal of Systems Thinking.