Some underlying themes
A number of common themes seem to run through the PDF, both through the ‘physics pages’ and the ‘mental pages’.
This is a cursory list (fishing, as ever, for any thoughts you might have):
- Dichotomies tend to turn out to be ontologically ‘false’, yet epistemologically ‘faithful’. Ontologically every one of the dichotomies listed encapsulate the paradox of two mutually defining parts of a whole which would not otherwise exist. Epistemologically they are not only faithful representations of the way things appear to be, these dichotomies represent some of our most fundamental conceptual tools for understanding reality.
- Infinity / Holism could run through the pages as an overarching (yet dubious) dichotomy of sorts — dubious because they aren't quite mutually defining opposites, or are they? Oughtn't we be able to conceive of infinity itself as a whole? Or is the fact that nothing exists outside that whole preclude infinity from being defined as a whole? Is wholeness just an incompatible, perhaps inadequate concept here? Anyway, there's a tension that goes unresolved between infinity and wholeness that I wanted to draw attention to. There is a sense in which infinity within a whole works for the mental side as well as, more obviously, the physical side of things. Information processing requires holism, a set range of already processed possibilities, yet out of which a potentially infinite number of other possibilities can be included/excluded.
- Some of the dichotomies are similar to each other, almost analogous, just at different levels of complexity. The following dichotomies for instance; space/time (through contraction/expansion of a positive/negative) becomes matter/void, energy/entropy and pleasure/pain emerges from prediction/error (via order/disorder, homeostasis/surprisal). This suggests a hierarchy of complexity in the universe; not necessarily as we usually envision complexity as from small to large space-time scale, but rather from interlinked (and paradoxical) dichotomies emerging out of and defined by each other.
- Potential / Actual might be another ‘hidden’ dichotomy running through the pages. It gets a mention on the finite/infinite page, yet potential/actual might equally well add illumination to some of the other terms; whole, part, absolute, relative, space, time, energy, entropy, etc.
- A difference that makes a difference — this simple seam certainly runs through the whole set of papers.
There are probably other themes, your thoughts would be appreciated…