Ontological Independence

Ontological independence is the property of existing or obtaining without reliance on anything else for one's existence, nature, or identity. It is the converse of ontological dependence: where dependence is the relation of leaning, independence is the posture of standing alone. In classical metaphysics, independence was the defining mark of substance — that which exists per se, in and through itself, requiring no other as condition. The concept survives in contemporary debates about fundamentality, where the search for independent entities has become the search for the ontological bedrock upon which everything else rests.

The systems-theoretic challenge to ontological independence is straightforward: if systems are networks of mutual dependence, then independence is not a property of components but a limit case — the empty graph, the system with no edges. To call something 'independent' is to abstract it from the relations that constitute it. The abstraction may be useful, but it is not a discovery of metaphysical structure. It is a methodological choice to stop drawing edges.