The Switches
Assumption switching is my prescription for increasing insight. Here are several:
If a statement is true, its opposite must be false.
vs.
Since the world is too rich to be subsumed by any single formal theory, the fullest description of the world involves complementary theories with contradictory assumptions (including the superposition of the two theories generated from these contradictory assumptions).
The world is independent of the maps we have made to describe it.
vs.
The world is part of the process of description and thus consists in maps of a sort.
Things stay the same unless something causes them to change.
vs.
Things change unless they are prevented from doing so.
Events in the present are determined by events in the past.
vs.
The state of a system is attracted toward certain preexisting preferred states (states of least energy, etc.)
Things set processes in motion
vs.
Things are stable processes.
The deepest background of physical space is a passive void in which things and processes play out their interactions
vs.
Space is a plenum which is inseparable from the phenomena of the world
Nothingness is a well-defined concept.
vs.
There is no completely consistent way to represent absence.
Every event A is caused by some set of events A'.
vs.
Coincident events, A and A', arise mutually.
Perception is the passive reception of a separate outside world.
vs.
Conscious perceptions are exchanges.
Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of materialistic processes.
vs.
Matter is all information and influence, and thus consciousness of a type is a fundamental aspect of all events.
To understand a process or an object look to its components.
vs.
To understand a process look to the wholes of which it is part. That is, look at its place in its context.
Forms perpetuate themselves through competition.
vs.
Forms perpetuate themselves by becoming indispensable parts of ecosystems
All but the most fundamental things are made of more primitive components.
vs.
Things participate in their own development.