The second problematic feature of deep ecology concerns the principle of self-realization, which claims that the human self (small ‘s’) is actualized only when it becomes merged with the cosmos, a Self (capital ‘S’). Plumwood argues that this principle is false because it keeps intact “the discontinuity thesis”—the thesis that there is a clear ontological divide between humans (or the sphere of culture) and nature. Culture and nature are “discontinuous” because humans are separate from and different in kind from nature. For Plumwood, the discontinuity thesis is false and any environmental philosophy that assumes it is conceptually flawed. Plumwood argues that since deep ecology assumes, rather than denies (as deep ecologists claim), the discontinuity thesis, deep ecology is a conceptually flawed environmental philosophy.