Context
This synopsis records the distinction between two styles of philosophizing:
- A catalog of metaphysical entities: listing and classifying “entities of being.”
- Investigation of the genesis of experience: analyzing how forms, categories, and concepts arise for a subject in the first place.
The central idea is that the conflict “philosophy versus materialism” often arises not from philosophy as such, but from conflating these two approaches.
1) Why Materialists Get the Impression That Philosophy Is “Empty”
The materialist (or physicalist) perspective generally demands:
- observability;
- experimental verification;
- a model connected to a mechanism;
- predictive power.
When instead it encounters a chain of “new term → another term → relations between terms → classification of terms,” it looks like wordplay.
Typical examples: “substance,” “accident,” “essence,” “modality,” “categories of being.”
This produces the response: “This is a linguistic construction without an operational mechanism.” And sometimes that criticism is indeed accurate.
2) Where Exactly the Problem Lies
The problem is not philosophy as a whole, but a style that can be called:
a catalog of metaphysical entities.
Its typical cycle:
- a concept is taken;
- it is declared fundamental;
- a list is constructed around it;
- relations within the list are then discussed.
In this form, the work easily becomes an endless taxonomy, weakly connected with how thinking and experience actually arise.
3) An Alternative Philosophical Approach
The other approach asks a different question:
- not “which entities exist?”;
- but “how does a structure of experience arise for a subject?”
The focus shifts to the conditions making possible:
- the singling out of an object;
- stability of identity;
- number;
- causality;
- categorical thinking.
This approach is closer to transcendental philosophy and phenomenology and, in contemporary language, overlaps with philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
4) The Mechanism of Category Formation (Working Scheme)
Key hypothesis:
A category arises when consciousness repeatedly recognizes different things as “the same.”
Steps of the Mechanism
- Distinction: variants are given (for example, apple₁, apple₂) that actually differ.
- Comparison: consciousness compares them according to their features.
- Erasure of some differences: details are discarded as secondary.
- Act of recognition: “this is the same” is fixed.
- Repetition: recognition is repeated in new cases.
- Stabilization: a stable scheme forms.
- Category: a concept such as “apple” appears.
Thus a category is not an initial “given of the world,” but a stabilized pattern of recognition.
5) Relationship to Cognitive Science
This scheme accords well with the ways categorization is often described in cognitive models:
- through prototypes;
- through pattern recognition;
- through statistical clusters of features.
A category usually does not exist as a strict “essential definition,” but as a dynamic mode of recognizing similarities.
6) The Fundamental Remaining Question
Even if a category is derived from recognition, a deeper level remains:
- why comparison is possible at all;
- how memory is possible;
- how “identity across time” is held;
- what makes the repetition of recognition possible in principle.
This is the place for fundamental philosophy: not a catalog of finished forms, but an analysis of the conditions under which they arise.
7) Condensed Formula of the Proposed Approach
The genesis of a category can be represented as a sequence:
distinction → selection of relevant features → memory → repeated recognition → stabilization → category.
Consequence: a category is secondary to the activity of consciousness.
8) Why Philosophers’ Systems of Categories Diverge
Historical fact:
- different authors have different lists of categories;
- lists are rarely derived from a common reproducible mechanism;
- more often, they describe “ready-made forms of thought” within a particular tradition.
Moving from catalog to genesis makes the variation understandable: different levels of stabilization and different frameworks for selecting features are fixed.
9) A Strong Interpretation of Category
In this approach, a category is:
a stabilized economy of distinctions.
Consciousness reduces the cognitive cost of processing: rather than fully analyzing each case, it employs an already formed scheme of “this is the same.”
10) Relationship Between Category and Number
If number is understood as the repetition of “the same,” the connection is:
- category answers “what is this?” (identity);
- number answers “how many times has it been repeated?” (multiplicity).
Thus number depends on the operation of repeated recognition, not only on the external counting of objects.
11) Methodological Caution
This scheme must not be turned into a new dogma.
The appropriate approach is:
- investigate the mechanisms of emergence;
- preserve openness to alternative models;
- check where the scheme explains and where it simplifies.
Otherwise “anti-catalog” philosophy will itself become another catalog.
12) The Main Shift in Attention
The most productive change in focus:
- not “a list of entities”;
- but “the process through which form arises.”
Here lie the foundations of:
- logic;
- mathematics;
- language;
- conceptual thinking.
Radical conclusion: without memory and repeated recognition, neither concepts, formal logic, nor mathematical identity arise.
