A game of sameness and difference
When we observe the world we partition it, categorise it, make delineations, add parameters and specify. We define, standardise, discriminate. We love to define things because it's a part of learning more about their "specific" relationships and nature with one another.
Our languages reflect this cognitive tendency: the who/subjects, what/nouns, when/ tenses, how or why/verbs and where/ locations: all of which are used to reflect the spacetime, energy, matter, causality, sentience and relationships we observe in reality.
But just as there are many difference between things and phenomena, there are also similarities.
The coin has two sides. And I would imagine they're quite even. That is to say there are just as many possible similarities/sameness to things as there are differences between them.
And between similarity and difference we have a boundaries in opposition, in conflict, contradictory. Paradoxes -paradoxes in time (grandfather paradox), paradoxes in identity (ship of theseus), paradoxes of space and distance (zenos paradox), paradoxes in language/meaning (liar paradox).
I wonder, do we as humans spend more time separating things out than closing them in/unifying them? Ought we not do both equally?
Secondly, I wonder of our logical paradoxes emerge simply because we have made too many separate variables in constructing the assumptions that lead to them.
A simple example: the grandfather paradox can be resolved if "time" does not exist as an isolated external phenomenon but rather as a perception innate to the conscious mind.
Therefore you cannot travel back in time and kill your grandfather (because time doesnt exist as medium to travel through in its own right). You can simply imagine doing so by remembering an earlier point in time (perception of time - visiting a memory being in this case analogous to mental time travel).
Hence the false paradox: what is assumed to be possible (imagination) in conflict with what actually is (a coherent chain of causality).
Our languages reflect this cognitive tendency: the who/subjects, what/nouns, when/ tenses, how or why/verbs and where/ locations: all of which are used to reflect the spacetime, energy, matter, causality, sentience and relationships we observe in reality.
But just as there are many difference between things and phenomena, there are also similarities.
The coin has two sides. And I would imagine they're quite even. That is to say there are just as many possible similarities/sameness to things as there are differences between them.
And between similarity and difference we have a boundaries in opposition, in conflict, contradictory. Paradoxes -paradoxes in time (grandfather paradox), paradoxes in identity (ship of theseus), paradoxes of space and distance (zenos paradox), paradoxes in language/meaning (liar paradox).
I wonder, do we as humans spend more time separating things out than closing them in/unifying them? Ought we not do both equally?
Secondly, I wonder of our logical paradoxes emerge simply because we have made too many separate variables in constructing the assumptions that lead to them.
A simple example: the grandfather paradox can be resolved if "time" does not exist as an isolated external phenomenon but rather as a perception innate to the conscious mind.
Therefore you cannot travel back in time and kill your grandfather (because time doesnt exist as medium to travel through in its own right). You can simply imagine doing so by remembering an earlier point in time (perception of time - visiting a memory being in this case analogous to mental time travel).
Hence the false paradox: what is assumed to be possible (imagination) in conflict with what actually is (a coherent chain of causality).
Comments (3)
The classic Aristotelian definition of a definition is genus + specific difference. Namely, understanding something involves understanding both its likeness to other things and its unlikeness to other things. Without this, we are unable to pick things out at all. If one does not understand its likeness they will not be able to contextualize it, and if they do not understand its unlikeness they will not be able to individuate it.
So I think we need both, and I think we tend to have both.