Determinate Negation II

Is this the second time I've used that heading?

Quantum theory and information theory exist (in my head) as a sort of puddle of bedraggled ideas, tangled in with one another.  Also, Hegel's theory of conceptual structures forming as networks of 'determinate negation' as expounded by Robert Brandom, have my brain by the stem.  He explains that Hegel thinks that the reason conceptualisation can work, get real grips on the world, is that the world already shows up 'in conceptual shape.' By this he means that things are not other things. Places are not other places.  Things don't occupy identical coordinates of space-time.  They don't occupy more than once set of coordinates. Concepts or intentional content works like the world, except that what in the world is describable with 'alethic modal' vocabulary (does), in human minds applies with 'deontic normative' vocabulary (should).  An object can't have two properties from the same system of determinate negation (round and square).  A person though, can have two mental commitments (ideas) that are incompatible, although they should not - and to be a person for the most part they do not.  The information theory aspect is just that the entropy.

This article at Ars Technica reports a fascinating result from the famous double slit experiment and the first comment outlines a collection of the ways it didn't need to get any more fascinating. I feel like there is some relationship - it is as if we see the mental life of the particle/wave.  It can get into a state of entaglement, holding two or more states simultaneously in tension, but to engage with anything else the wave function collapses and fall into a determinate state.  This collapse is arbitration with exquisite fairness.

Gene Wolfe (who I haven't talked about for a while) in his 'Wizard-Knight' novels constructs a seven-layered world.  The Most High God occupies the uppermost layer (Paradise); then Elysion (home of angels including Michael), then Skai (home of the Norse gods), then Mythgarthr (the middle level, home to humans), then Aelfrice (home to the Aelf), then Muspel (home to dragons), and then Hell, the home of one styling himself the Most Low God.  In Mythgarthr, things are most determinate - human life is quite conventional in most respects.  A level above or below, and things become a little more elastic - you can realise the mountain you have travelled three days on is a Frost Giant, but then fight him.  Each level also has its own time, but that's not so important.  I love Gene Wolfe for constructing this carefully, using it thoroughly and making it richly meaningful.

For both, I imagine a U shaped graph of scale and determinacy.  At the lowest and highest level there is the possibility of superposition, a thing that for a time is permitted to have two or more properties. No, I'm losing it.  Bad enough this blog is about everything, I definitely will try not to make posts about everything from now on.