Model
Dependent
Ontology
A novel view about (what we call) reality.
models as operations, not representations
Model Dependent Ontology: a novel view about (what we call) reality
Model Dependent Ontology reframes how we understand (what we understand as) "reality." Rather than treating models as representations that succeed when they match an independent world, MDO treats models as reality-making operations deployed for goals.
Every model is a constructed set of operations underpinned by narratives designed to navigate (what we experience as) constraint and possibility. The conventional assumption, that models succeed through correspondence to (what we believe is) objective reality, is the fundamental misconception. Individuals commit to particular models convinced of their alignment with reality itself. This conviction persists until a new model emerges, rendering the previous one obsolete and revealing its lack of inherent connection to (what was claimed as) the way things are.
This isn't relativism. Models face real operational pressure. Metamorphosis either works or kills the organism, dimensional collapse into single evaluative axes produces pathological certainty, constraint-space either permits navigation or it doesn't. But the ground of evaluation is goal-adequation against real possibilities, not correspondence to observer-independent facts.
The difficulty understanding MDO is not its inherent complexity. It's the necessity to discard the conceptual baggage we carry without noticing it. Even sophisticated rejections of naive realism usually preserve the architecture they claim to abandon, playing the same game with different rules. MDO questions the dependencies themselves, the frame where representation and reality already function as paired concepts making mutual sense.
Developed by Manuel Delaflor, philosopher and cognitive researcher, MDO emerges from investigating how models operate rather than what they claim to represent. The framework addresses what happens when we stop asking "which model is true?" and start asking "adequate for what?"
About me
Philosophy has been an important part of my life since I was a little kid. I always wondered about "the big questions" and spent countless years looking for answers in books and schools.
I have training as a scientist, studying the electrophysiological correlates of conscious experience. Six years collaborating with neuroscientist Jacobo Grinberg at UNAM, member of a Cognitive Science Group, intensive meditation retreats investigating experience directly.
At one point I realized several things. Not answers to the original questions, but recognition that the questions themselves carried unexamined assumptions. The result is not something easily understood, not because of its inherent complexity, but because you need to discard all the conceptual baggage, we carry without even noticing it.
MDO came from watching models operate, from seeing metamorphosis as ontological reset rather than property-change, from recognizing that operational cognition stays honest through feedback while linguistic cognition drifts into coherent nonsense. From questioning not which ontology is correct but what work ontologies do as model-parts.
The journey has been fascinating, and I hope to share that investigation with readers willing to examine their own unnoticed frames.
www.manueldelaflor.com