Deep section · Δ — Difference

Difference (Δ): starting as small as possible

This section develops the first step of the IO chain in a more deliberate way. We want a starting point that is both minimal and unavoidable: something you cannot deny without using it. Difference is proposed as that starting point.

1. The role of a starting point

Many ontologies begin by assuming a certain kind of stuff (matter, mind, spacetime) or a certain set of laws. IO takes a different route: it asks what must be in place for there to be a world that can even be talked or thought about.

The candidate is structural rather than material: there must be some way for one possible state not to be exactly the same as another. Call that "difference" in the most general sense.

2. Why difference is hard to deny

Suppose someone claims: "There are no differences anywhere."

To understand that claim, you already contrast it with the alternative that there are differences. You rely on a difference between:

• "a world with differences"
• and "a world with none".

The act of making the claim also happens at a particular time, in a particular configuration of a brain or system, which is different from other possible configurations. The content and the act of denial both presuppose difference.

IO takes this self-undermining structure seriously: difference is not a conclusion reached from neutral ground, it is part of the ground itself.

3. Keeping difference thin

At this stage we resist the urge to thicken the notion of difference with extra assumptions. In particular, we do not yet specify:

• what kinds of "things" are differing,
• whether the background is spatial, temporal, or something else,
• whether matter, mind, or mathematics are fundamental,
• or whether any observer is present.

Difference here is simply the abstract possibility that "this" is distinguishable from "that" in some way. It is a constraint on how reality must be structured to allow anything like experience, measurement, or thought.

4. From isolated differences to networks

One bare difference is already enough to block total uniformity. But as soon as you admit more than one difference, you can compare them:

• Are they larger or smaller?
• Closer or further apart?
• Compatible or incompatible?

Those comparisons are the first hint of what IO calls relation (R). You cannot have indefinitely many free-floating differences that never stand in any systematic "in-between"—they fall naturally into patterns. Capturing that is the work of the next step in the chain.