Serial Musings #5

In order to avoid an infinite regress, we can think of a differentiation threshold which the crossing of generates an exhaustion of differentiating and keeps the intensity of (further) differentiation at bay (within a(nother) threshold). Individuation, for example, would work like this.

In other words, differentiation would differentiate from previous differentiation with such intensity that it would separate itself from previous differentiation and would individuate itself in a more or less stable manner, since it would begin to differentiate (further) at low(er) intensity differentiation, exhausted by crossing the differentiation threshold (that led to individuation and stabilization, that is lower intensity).

If we look closely, there is a dangerously fun similarity here between an operation and its dual. That is, differentiation would be the fundamental operation, but an operation carries with it its dual (if we are understanding the results of category theory correctly, this time about adjunction), so differentiation and de-differentiation – that is, stabilization, (towards) identity – are both operative.

This assures us that there are turtles differentiations only almost all the way down, as it is self-hosting and bootstrapping.

In other words: the process stops and rests on a dynamic stability between differentiation and de-differentiation. In a sense, we can say that it is the dynamics between differentiation and de-differentiation that ensure the (relative) stabilization of the (universal) process(es) – all the while sustaining the dynamism necessary to start the process(es).

This reminds me of a sentence by a great professor I had during undergrad: "where there is a force, there is a counterforce".

In this sense, differentiation does not differentiate from itself enough to become pure identitary stability, because alongside de-differentiation there is always the stabilization of difference qua difference, difference (as) itself.