Artificial Externality: A Three-Layer Model of Reality from Substrate to Smart Contract
Philosophy & Technology August 11, 2026 DOI: 10.1007/s13347-026-01158-6 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 2 |
| Key points | Argues that reality is characterized by resistance rather than substance, and that technology—specifically virtual environments, AI agents, and blockchain smart contracts—can artificially produce the modalities of Contingency and the Inexorable. Introduces "Artificial Externality" to describe human-made structures engineered to be practically insurmountable even for their creators, thereby acquiring an externality once attributed only to nature, and suggests this shifts how we determine what counts as real and conscious. |
Abstract
What is real has always been something we find , not something we make —or so philosophy has assumed. This paper argues otherwise. Characterizing reality through resistance rather than substance (the ways the world refuses a subject’s mastery), I distinguish three modalities correlative to epistemic, judgmental, and practical mastery: Substrate (matter’s resistance to representation), Contingency (the forceful givenness of experience that resists revision by judgment), and the Inexorable (structures’ resistance to intervention). Treating virtual environments, AI agents, and blockchain smart contracts not as proofs but as revelatory cases, I show that technology now extends the latter two modalities, Contingency and the Inexorable, artificially. The result is the paper’s central concept, Artificial Externality : human-made structures whose resistance to intervention is deliberately engineered to be practically insurmountable, even for their creators, and that thereby acquire an externality once attributed only to nature. Absoluteness, traditionally found, can now be produced. I close by drawing out the stakes for consciousness: our criteria for what counts as real quietly shape our criteria for what counts as conscious.