This is an outline of Pure Relational Materialism (PRM), a foundational philosophical framework derived purely from relations of matter.

1. An object is something that exists as a unit. An entity is something that functions as a unit. All objects are entities, but not all entities are objects.

2. What exists has spatiotemporal location and causal power. What functions does so within relations of matter, regardless of existence.

3. There is that.

This is an encounter of space (there), time (is), and matter (that); to encounter the encountered (there is that) is to reveal in relation the encounterer (here is this).

I am this, here, now.

4. There is matter in relation. Space is intelligible only from the relations of matter; time is intelligible only from the change in the relations of matter. 

5. Reality is the totality of matter-in-relation (matterspacetime).

6. Encounter precedes experience; experience precedes knowledge; knowledge precedes knowing that encounter is existence, that is, encounter/existence is prior to experience, knowledge, concepts, and language.

7. If there are two objects — “this” and “this” — then there are “these”; with “these” there are “those”. From grouping, differentiating, and naming of the encountered, entities are formed.

8. “This is a human.” From this expression, Aristotle derived “this human” and called it a primary substance or particular. But “this human” already introduces the secondary substance or universal human. Aristotle in “this human” saw “human”; in “this human” I see “this”. Only “this” is an existent object.

9. Entities function as mappings, overlays, projections, representations, categories, labels, abstractions, concepts.

10. Truth is when knowledge/language/action conforms to reality.

11. What exists? There is only matter-in-relation (ontology). How do we know? We know from encounter, experience and conceptualization (epistemology). How should we live? We should live in fidelity to matter-in-relation, in how we understand reality, in what we say about reality (ethics in language) and in what we do within reality (ethics in action).

(Version PRM-20251223-0428)

Authored by Warren Tang

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