Giving a model of something is reductionism; it is a need to explain a wealth of experience through several (first) principles. Often those principles are not something that we get from direct experience, but are notions that we imagine/assume through our speculation. Such are for example notions of atom, force, quark, quantum wave equation and quantum collapse, energy and space-time, neuron and synapse, etc… Even in some of those cases we’ve never witnessed such things in our experience, through speculation we are building models based on those things trying to get to the essence of the phenomena we experience. In such way these assumed notions are first principles of the model, things through which we should be able to explain facts from our experience (observations, measurements). First principles we use are not simple abstractions (e.g. number), we further imagine different properties in them, and also imagine how they interact between each other. In the end those first principles are *defined by*, and are nothing else then their properties and the way they interact with each other and possibly the way how they interact with “I”, or with our experience (some theories ignore the interaction with “I”).
Usually this view of reductionism is mixed with specific kind of reductionism, the one where different parts are seen as first principles through which we explain facts in our experience. In such (restricted) case, reductionism would mean explaining phenomenon we witness in our experience through (imagined) functioning of certain entities (like atoms, subatomic particles, forces etc…) which have simpler nature then the phenomena. In such reductionism those parts are the first principles that should be found in order to give the model. But, this kind of definition (of reductionism) is going one step further and is implying one kind of solution; is *specific* model. If we take a look on such modeling of things, we come to a problem. If we come to some parts as first principles, how do we do the joining? Or how do we implicitly bring a connection in the model? It takes some time to see that doing that is impossible. A whole, as a need all entities to share common existence, is required (explicitly) in order for those separate “parts” to be able to interact. A whole as such is something that can’t be reduced to some other first principles, must be one of the first principles. That is inevitable in any model.
Though, even the name - “parts” implies that they are parts *of something*, and in that way, that they don’t have existence by themselves, but they have existence in that something whose parts they are, so the whole as first principle is already there hinted in the term.
And even more, the very moment we start to build a model, and imagine those notions, we are starting from our “unity of consciousness”, a possibility to keep in mind more things in same time, and doing that while we think of model, we bring implicitly the quality of whole to the model, without having to explicitly state it as first principle.
But as now we are trying to give the model of that Mind which builds models, we can’t ignore the whole as first principle, and we must take it as *the* first principle, as I hope was clearly explained until now.
“Being part of whole” is another principle that we must have of course, there must be a principle the whole must have, by which the part can have separateness if we are to talk about parts at all and give any model (and the fact is that we recognize parts in our Mind and are able to give models). This deduction is a general fact for any whole, but here it is particularly interesting as we are directly aware of the whole of the cognition.
So in this model, I will start from cognitive whole as first principle, and add other first principles which will be needed to get parts from the whole. Those second basic principles will be named “differentiations” (they can be also called abstractions).
While building this model it should be kept in mind that we are building this model *after* building/having the model of science because of the possibility questions that can’t be explained within that model of science. But that means we must be aware that the model of science explains a lot of the facts from its experiences, and we must have on mind model of science all the time, which should be part of this model (or this model should expand on model of science, not necessary expanding the science itself).
If this argumentation of “whole” and “differentiations” as first principles is seen as too vague and metaphysical, you can ignore it and see what other consequences and explanations this kind of model gives, mostly for possibility questions as was argued in previous text. One such issue follows…
But then the question arise… how do we know that something is color even we have never have seen it before and learned that it is color? How is it possible to ask “what is that color?”? The possibility of that question shows that we know that something is color even we have never seen it before, that the concept of color is not just a set.
So if the relation between “instances” of color and the abstract concept of “color” isn’t the relation between elements of the set and the set, what kind of relation is it?
The model of “whole” and “differentiations” can address such possibility - “color” needs to be one of the possible differentiations (abstraction/determination), through which we get to the “parts of the whole” as discussed previously. So in such model, color IS one power of abstraction, IS the specific might to abstract some color from the cognitive whole, and the result IS the result of the abstraction, but also is the abstraction. So red is both color (as to get to it we need to do differentiation by color from the whole), and is that specific result (which is further determined as red) as part of the context we are determining.
But let’s leave the details of this kind of relations for later, as here we were merely interested in presenting arguments for the whole and differentiations as first principles generally.