Abstraction

This dialogue develops and refines a radically minimal meta-philosophical framework built on two primitives: expression and resonance. All abstractions—truth, existence, structure, novelty, goodness, God—are treated not as mind-independent entities, but as stabilized expressions within resonant communities of embodied agents. What remains outside discourse is not structured reality-in-itself, but a minimal ontological remainder that conditions resonance without being expressible or structured in itself. The discussion proceeds through a systematic stripping-away of metaphysical inflation. Truth is shown to be discourse-dependent; existence is not a rock-bottom predicate but a stabilized operator within specific microlects (e.g., Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, evangelical theology). Scientific practice is reinterpreted not as access to transcendent structure but as a set of behavioral microlects (“micropracts”) whose experimental procedures produce convergence through shared embodiment and constraint. The apparent “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” dissolves under an evolutionary selection account: vast formal variation filtered by embodied cognitive limits and experimental stabilization. The resulting ontology is austere but asymmetric. Structure, law, and novelty are emergent within expression–resonance dynamics. The minimal remainder is neither structured nor meaningful; it merely conditions which expressions can stably resonate. Convergence in physics is explained not by pre-given intrinsic structure but by common human embodiment interacting under shared constraint. Cognitive ceilings—evolutionary limits on possible thought—further bound resonance landscapes. The dialogue culminates in a self-application of the framework: microlectics itself is an expression seeking resonance. Publication, citation, and community uptake are treated as measurable resonance events. The problem of theodicy is proposed as a high-leverage domain for microlectic analysis, reframing it not as a metaphysical contradiction but as a persistent closure defect within a historically powerful microlect. The conversation models the process it describes: clarity under pressure, reduction to minimal primitives, and acknowledgment of the emotional tension between conceptual satisfaction and intellectual solitude. Rather than presenting a manifesto, the piece exhibits the emergence of a minimal ontology through dialogue, inviting readers not to assent but to test resonance.