Here I describe the most important, the most general principles of my philosophy.
Objects exist only in context of each other, like colors in a spectrum. So objects are like “colors”, and the space of those objects is like a “spectrum”.
All properties of an object are connected/equivalent. Basically, an object has only 1 super property. This super property can be called “color”.
Colors differentiate all usual properties. For example, “blue height” and “red height” are 2 fundamentally different types of height. But “blue height” and “blue flatness” are the same property.
So, each color is like a world with its own rules. Different objects exist in different worlds.
The same properties have different “meaning” in different objects. A property is like a word that heavily depends on context. If the context is different, the meaning of the property is different too. There’s no single metric that would measure all of the objects. For example, if the property of the object is “height”, and you change any thing that’s connected to height or reflects height in any way—you fundamentally change what “height” means. Even if only by a small amount.
Note: different objects/colors are like qualia, subjective experiences (colors, smells, sounds, tactile experiences). Or you could say they’re somewhat similar to Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads”: simple substances without physical properties.
The objects I want to talk about are “places”: fantastical worlds or videogame levels. For example, fantastical worlds of Jacek Yerka.
Details
“Detail” is like the smallest structural unit of a place. The smallest area where you could stand.
It’s like a square on the chessboard. But it doesn’t mean that any area of the place can be split into distinct “details”. The whole place is not like a chessboard.
This is a necessary concept. Without “details” there would be no places to begin with. Or those places wouldn’t have any comprehensible structure.
Colors
“Details” are like cells. Cells make up different types of tissues. “Details” make up colors. You can compare colors to textures or materials.
(The places I’m talking about are not physical. So the example below is just an analogy.)
Imagine that you have small toys in the shape of 3D solids. You’re interested in their volume. They have very clear sides, you study their volume with simple formulas.
Then you think: what is the volume of the giant cloud behind my window? What is a “side” of a cloud? Do clouds even have “real” shapes? What would be the formula for the volume of a cloud, would it be the size of a book?
The volume of the cloud has a different color. Because the context around the “volume” changed completely. Because clouds are made of a different type of “tissue”. (compared to toys)
OK, we resolved one question, but our problems don’t end here. Now we encounter an object that looks like a mix between a cloud and a simple shape. Are we allowed to simplify it into a simple shape? Are we supposed to mix both volumes? In what proportions and in what way?
We need rules to interpret objects (rules to assign importance to different parts or “layers” of an object before mixing them into a single substance). We need rules to mix colors. We need rules to infer intermediate colors.
Spectrum(s)
There are different spectrums. (Maybe they’re all parts of one giant spectrum. And maybe one of those spectrums contains our world.)
Often I imagine a spectrum as something similar to the visible spectrum: a simple order of places, from the first to the last.
A spectrum gives you the rules to interpret places and to create colors. How to make a spectrum?
You take a bunch of places. Make some loose assumptions about them. You assume where “details” in the places are and may be.
Based on the similarities between the places, you come up with the most important “colors” (“materials”) these places may be made of.
You come up with rules that tell you how to assign the colors to the places. Or how to modify the colors so that they fit the places.
The colors you came up with have an order:
The farther you go in a spectrum, the more details dissolve. First you have distinct groups of details that create volume. Then you have “flat”/stretched groups of details. Then you have “cloud-like” groups of details.
But those colors are not assigned to the places immediately. We’ve ordered abstract concepts, but haven’t ordered the specific places. Here’re some of the rules that allow you to assign the colors to the places:
When you evaluate a place, the smaller-scale structures matter more. For example, if the the smaller-scale structure has a clear shape and the larger-scale structure doesn’t have a clear shape, the former structure matters more in defining the place.
The opposite is true for “negative places”: the larger scale structures contribute more. I often split my spectrum into a “positive” part and a “negative” part. They are a little bit like positive and negative numbers.
You can call those “normalization principles”. But we need more.
The principle of explosion/vanishing
Two places with different enough detail patterns can’t have the same color. Because a color is the detail pattern.
One of the two places have to get a bigger or a smaller (by a magnitude) color. But this may lead to an “explosion” (the place becomes unbelievably big/too distant from all the other places) or to a “vanishing” (the place becomes unbelievably microscopic/too distant).
This is bad because you can’t allow so much uncertainty about the places’ positions. It’s also bad because it completely violates all of your initial assumptions about the places. You can’t allow infinite uncertainty.
When you have a very small amount of places in a spectrum, they have a lot of room to move around. You’re unsure about their positions. But when you have more places, due to the domino effect you may start getting “explosions” and “vanishings”. They will allow you to rule out wrong positions, wrong rankings.
Overlay (superposition)
We also need a principle that would help us to sort places with the “same” color.
I feel it goes something like this:
Take places with the same color. Let’s say this color is “groups of details that create volume”.
If the places have no secondary important colors mixed in:
Overlay (superimpose) those places over each other.
Ask: if I take a random piece of a volume, what’s the probability that this piece is from the place X? Sort the places by such probabilities.
If the places do have some secondary important colors mixed in:
Overlay (superimpose) those places over each other.
Ask: how hard is it to get from the place’s main color to the place’s secondary color? (Maybe mix and redistribute the secondary colors of the places.) Sort places by that.
For example, let’s say the secondary color is “groups of details that create a surface that covers the entire place” (the main one is “groups of details that create volume”). Then you ask: how hard is it to get from the volume to that surface?
Note: I feel it might be related to Homeostatic Property Clusters. I learned the concept from a Philosophy Tube video. It reminded me of “family resemblance” popularized by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Thought: places by themselves are incomparable. They can be compared only inside of a spectrum.
3 cats (a slight tangent/bonus)
Imagine a simple drawing of a cat. And a simple cat sculpture. And a real cat. Do they feel different?
If “yes”, then you experience a difference between various qualia. You feel some meta knowledge about qualia. You feel qualia “between” qualia.
You look at the same thing in different contexts. And so you look at 3 versions of it through 3 different lenses. If you looked at everything through the same lens, you would recognize only a single object.
If you understand what I’m talking about here, then you understand what I’m trying to describe about “colors”. Colors are different lenses, different contexts.
Key philosophical principles
Here I describe the most important, the most general principles of my philosophy.
Objects exist only in context of each other, like colors in a spectrum. So objects are like “colors”, and the space of those objects is like a “spectrum”.
All properties of an object are connected/equivalent. Basically, an object has only 1 super property. This super property can be called “color”.
Colors differentiate all usual properties. For example, “blue height” and “red height” are 2 fundamentally different types of height. But “blue height” and “blue flatness” are the same property.
So, each color is like a world with its own rules. Different objects exist in different worlds.
The same properties have different “meaning” in different objects. A property is like a word that heavily depends on context. If the context is different, the meaning of the property is different too. There’s no single metric that would measure all of the objects. For example, if the property of the object is “height”, and you change any thing that’s connected to height or reflects height in any way—you fundamentally change what “height” means. Even if only by a small amount.
Note: different objects/colors are like qualia, subjective experiences (colors, smells, sounds, tactile experiences). Or you could say they’re somewhat similar to Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads”: simple substances without physical properties.
The objects I want to talk about are “places”: fantastical worlds or videogame levels. For example, fantastical worlds of Jacek Yerka.
Details
“Detail” is like the smallest structural unit of a place. The smallest area where you could stand.
It’s like a square on the chessboard. But it doesn’t mean that any area of the place can be split into distinct “details”. The whole place is not like a chessboard.
This is a necessary concept. Without “details” there would be no places to begin with. Or those places wouldn’t have any comprehensible structure.
Colors
“Details” are like cells. Cells make up different types of tissues. “Details” make up colors. You can compare colors to textures or materials.
(The places I’m talking about are not physical. So the example below is just an analogy.)
Imagine that you have small toys in the shape of 3D solids. You’re interested in their volume. They have very clear sides, you study their volume with simple formulas.
Then you think: what is the volume of the giant cloud behind my window? What is a “side” of a cloud? Do clouds even have “real” shapes? What would be the formula for the volume of a cloud, would it be the size of a book?
The volume of the cloud has a different color. Because the context around the “volume” changed completely. Because clouds are made of a different type of “tissue”. (compared to toys)
OK, we resolved one question, but our problems don’t end here. Now we encounter an object that looks like a mix between a cloud and a simple shape. Are we allowed to simplify it into a simple shape? Are we supposed to mix both volumes? In what proportions and in what way?
We need rules to interpret objects (rules to assign importance to different parts or “layers” of an object before mixing them into a single substance). We need rules to mix colors. We need rules to infer intermediate colors.
Spectrum(s)
There are different spectrums. (Maybe they’re all parts of one giant spectrum. And maybe one of those spectrums contains our world.)
Often I imagine a spectrum as something similar to the visible spectrum: a simple order of places, from the first to the last.
A spectrum gives you the rules to interpret places and to create colors. How to make a spectrum?
You take a bunch of places. Make some loose assumptions about them. You assume where “details” in the places are and may be.
Based on the similarities between the places, you come up with the most important “colors” (“materials”) these places may be made of.
You come up with rules that tell you how to assign the colors to the places. Or how to modify the colors so that they fit the places.
The colors you came up with have an order:
The farther you go in a spectrum, the more details dissolve. First you have distinct groups of details that create volume. Then you have “flat”/stretched groups of details. Then you have “cloud-like” groups of details.
But those colors are not assigned to the places immediately. We’ve ordered abstract concepts, but haven’t ordered the specific places. Here’re some of the rules that allow you to assign the colors to the places:
When you evaluate a place, the smaller-scale structures matter more. For example, if the the smaller-scale structure has a clear shape and the larger-scale structure doesn’t have a clear shape, the former structure matters more in defining the place.
The opposite is true for “negative places”: the larger scale structures contribute more. I often split my spectrum into a “positive” part and a “negative” part. They are a little bit like positive and negative numbers.
You can call those “normalization principles”. But we need more.
The principle of explosion/vanishing
Two places with different enough detail patterns can’t have the same color. Because a color is the detail pattern.
One of the two places have to get a bigger or a smaller (by a magnitude) color. But this may lead to an “explosion” (the place becomes unbelievably big/too distant from all the other places) or to a “vanishing” (the place becomes unbelievably microscopic/too distant).
This is bad because you can’t allow so much uncertainty about the places’ positions. It’s also bad because it completely violates all of your initial assumptions about the places. You can’t allow infinite uncertainty.
When you have a very small amount of places in a spectrum, they have a lot of room to move around. You’re unsure about their positions. But when you have more places, due to the domino effect you may start getting “explosions” and “vanishings”. They will allow you to rule out wrong positions, wrong rankings.
Overlay (superposition)
We also need a principle that would help us to sort places with the “same” color.
I feel it goes something like this:
Take places with the same color. Let’s say this color is “groups of details that create volume”.
If the places have no secondary important colors mixed in:
Overlay (superimpose) those places over each other.
Ask: if I take a random piece of a volume, what’s the probability that this piece is from the place X? Sort the places by such probabilities.
If the places do have some secondary important colors mixed in:
Overlay (superimpose) those places over each other.
Ask: how hard is it to get from the place’s main color to the place’s secondary color? (Maybe mix and redistribute the secondary colors of the places.) Sort places by that.
For example, let’s say the secondary color is “groups of details that create a surface that covers the entire place” (the main one is “groups of details that create volume”). Then you ask: how hard is it to get from the volume to that surface?
Note: I feel it might be related to Homeostatic Property Clusters. I learned the concept from a Philosophy Tube video. It reminded me of “family resemblance” popularized by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Note 2: https://imgur.com/a/F5Vq8tN. Some examples I’m going to write about later.
Thought: places by themselves are incomparable. They can be compared only inside of a spectrum.
3 cats (a slight tangent/bonus)
Imagine a simple drawing of a cat. And a simple cat sculpture. And a real cat. Do they feel different?
If “yes”, then you experience a difference between various qualia. You feel some meta knowledge about qualia. You feel qualia “between” qualia.
You look at the same thing in different contexts. And so you look at 3 versions of it through 3 different lenses. If you looked at everything through the same lens, you would recognize only a single object.
If you understand what I’m talking about here, then you understand what I’m trying to describe about “colors”. Colors are different lenses, different contexts.