Abstract

What must reality be like for beings like us—conscious, morally responsible, vulnerable, and irreplaceable—to exist at all? This paper introduces the Dual‑Closure Framework, a unified philosophical system developed across fourteen works, which argues that authentic subjectivity and objective normativity are structurally interdependent and plausibly require two non‑negotiable conditions: existential vulnerability (the genuine risk of irreversible loss) and non‑duplicability (the impossibility of perfect replication without loss of identity). From these foundations, the framework offers a unified diagnosis of contemporary crises—climate instability, persistent war, the commodification of health, religious misrepresentation, and the push to equate artificial intelligence with human persons—and sketches a principled basis for ethics, law, and AI safety. This paper serves as an entry point to the full series, summarizing the core argument and guiding readers to the foundational works. All works are freely available on PhilArchive, where the full series can be accessed.