Neither seem satisfactory to me. I think that we definitely need both, and I see no need to prioritize one, let alone kill one with the other. I can't bridge the gap either, but oh well. — Wosret
That's only if you presuppose the opposite system in which identity is basic. But if difference is basic, and identity is a product of difference, then there is no problem - differences simply cannot be incommensurable, they are always dialectical - one difference presupposes the other, and together they form the fractured, always incomplete whole.Then there's infinitely many incommensurable ones — Wosret
That's logically incoherent though. Fire is always different from banana for example, even though they are incommensurable. To specify what fire is, one must negate everything that it is not.No, incommensurable means that there's no standard, or measurement that applies to both things in question. — Wosret
,If it is wholly a "product of language", and doesn't actually relate to any objective features of the world (besides language itself) then it remains incommensurable, and the implication is that it's arbitrary, without non-circular, non-self-referential standard, or comparison.
I agree to this. But difference is inherent in this dynamic process you mention - un-eliminable. Indeed identity develops in this process as the result of the interplay of difference.it's not there there simply are 'differences' or 'similarities' out there, 'in themselves'; rather, these notions come into being and are sustained by dynamic processes that underlie them, or bring about their undoing (the flea dies...). — StreetlightX
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