> Let me try differently. Your premise seems to be that "base reality" (your words) is a single teeming interconnectedness, indivisibly unique, from which it follows "there are no discrete systems", no categories, from which it follows that counting discrete things is an "artifact of human cognition".
Yes, I think you summarized it pretty good! Thanks for that.
> Yes, we may be all part of the same whole. But there definitely are divisions – you are manifesting them with your own words. QED.
Woah, not so fast, there! Where exactly do my words manifest divisions? The words you read on the screen, that manifest in your mind as meaning are not discrete things themselves. No word stands for itself, else we would not need dictionaries. They are fuzzy things that often change their meaning, depending on context, place and time, on the reader and what she ate in the morning. To claim that words are discrete things that exists
> The world being interconnected doesn't mean it's undifferentiated.
I agree. Just as there are patterns in stellar nebulae that swirl and dance but never quite separate, all the world manifests its decay in wonderful shapes and patterns.
But none of these patterns can be isolated from the others, for non of the patterns can there a definite line be drawn to say "your existence starts here and ends here". The boundary of every definition, of every category can be shifted and shifted and shifted some more. They are - as already mentioned - artifacts of cognition that allow us to form a mental model of the world that surrounds us. Replacing the unfathomable interconnectedness with a simple game of blocks and strings and forces that fit into the limited capabilities of the simulation we run in our heads.
> All work is still ahead of you in showing that categories and words are somehow "not intrinsic" (again, your words).
Categories and words, numbers and letters and the human mind are fleeting. How can they be intrinsic if they exist for only an eye blink?