Dear Edward,
First of all it is good to meet again, I read already your comments before you participated in this contest, and I fully agreed and thank you for reading my essay.
While reading your essay I made the following remarks:
Special relativity is indeed not as simple as it seems, because it analyses an emergent phenomenon, as you say the "ontology" of space and time in this framework. The ontology of simultaneity in an emergent phenomenon becomes ALWAYS the relativity of simultaneity. I tried to escape this with the introduction of the Subjective Simultaneity Sphere (SSS), the stationary frame is then the conscious agent, that can be seen as the reference of reference.
The velocity of light C, is for the conscious agent one of the borders of his reality, the maximum speed that the radius of his SSS can expand, so it doesn't mean that C is the ABSOLUTE velocity. You say : " Moving frames with arbitrary velocity are meaningless unless a universal velocity exists to which they can be compared.". Here you approach the same problem we all are struggling with "The Reference of Reference" You are right when you say: "moving reference frames are not accessible by us".
I can only fully agree with you when you say "It views time as the intuitive common-sense notion that it is NOW everywhere in the universe, all at once, with one moment passing into the next moment; moments in time spanning the entire three-dimensional space." This is exactly what I mean to say that the real NOW is an unapproachable moment in Total Simultaneity.
"Assignment of properties is essentially epistemology; the nature of the world is ontology. Assigning properties to the wrong ontology does not make sense" Bravo.
When you say "Two different mathematic-based structures can co-exist for quite a while, but only one of the two ontologies actually exists." I should like to add that the co-existence of these two mathematical based structures is a coexistence in the PAST, they were thought of in the past, both ontologies were existing in the past and the future will bring a new ontology because "existing" is only the unapproachable NOW.
Dear Edwin I really liked your essay and I didn't understand the first 1 someone gave you, but I see you are getting already the value it deserves, and I added now my personal valuation.
Best regards and good luck.
Wilhelmus de Wilde