Imperfecting Expression

David Morris's signature deformation of Smolin's neo-Leibnizian principle ("maximize difference, against identity of indiscernibles"). Morris's principle: "The principle isn't maximizing difference but 'imperfecting expression'" (morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time p. 168). Indeterminate being operates to generate / express causality, distributing change in spatio-temporal forms that exhibit weird entanglements and non-localities — but these weird phenomena are imperfections of perfect expression of causality, not failures. It is precisely this imperfection that enables being to be indeterminate, to be as doing the work of expressing.

The principle is the most condensed form of Morris's overall argument: indeterminate being's expressive activity is constitutively imperfect, and the imperfection is what makes the expression genuinely creative rather than determinate. Where Smolin's "maximize difference" presupposes determinate identities (monads) to compare and differentiate, "imperfecting expression" dispenses with determinate-identity bedrock and reads quantum-mechanical anomalies (entanglement, delayed choice, non-locality) as constitutive features of expression's indeterminate latitude.

Key Points

  • The principle: indeterminate being's expressive activity is constitutively imperfect; its imperfections are constitutive of its indeterminate latitude, not failures.
  • Deforms Smolin's neo-Leibnizianism. Smolin's temporal relationalism model treats relational change-dynamics as monads in a topological network with the rule of "maximize difference" (against the Leibnizian identity of indiscernibles). The model generates entanglement and non-locality as expressions of difference-maximization. Morris's deformation: replace "maximize difference" with "imperfect expression" — same phenomena, different ontological reading.
  • Refuses determinate-identity bedrock. Smolin's monads are determinate identities being differentiated. Morris's framework refuses this: fundamental change is indeterminate being, not yet a determinate identity. Without determinate identities to compare, "maximizing difference" has no base; what remains is the imperfection by which expression is expression.
  • Reads QM anomalies as constitutive, not anomalous. Entanglement, non-locality, delayed choice are not weirdnesses to be explained away. They are the spatio-temporal forms that imperfecting expression takes. The weirdness is the constitutive feature.
  • Is the inverse of Smolin's "maximize difference." Smolin's framework treats imperfection (entanglement, etc.) as the expression of a deeper rule (maximize difference). Morris's framework treats imperfection as the enabling condition of indeterminate being's expressive latitude. The inversion is structural: from "imperfection-as-result" to "imperfection-as-enabler."
  • Connects to MP's paradox of expression. What in human creativity is the paradox that the beginning's drive becomes clear only at the end is, in physical matter, the imperfection that allows expression to be expression. If expression were perfect (every imperfection eliminated), it would have nothing to express — it would coincide with what it expresses, and "expression" would lose its meaning.

What the Concept Does

Imperfecting expression performs three argumentative jobs:

  1. It dissolves the Leibnizian-determinate-identity presupposition in Smolin's framework. Smolin's temporal relationalism model is the most rigorous contemporary articulation of "time real, change fundamental, space generated." But it inherits Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles (or rather: presupposes it as the default the monads' "maximize difference" pushes against). Morris's deformation removes this presupposition: with imperfecting expression as the operative principle, there is no determinate-identity bedrock at the base, only indeterminate being expressing itself imperfectly.

  2. It articulates how QM weirdness is normal. Entanglement, non-locality, delayed choice are read by mainstream interpretations as either anomalies to be explained away or as manifestations of a deeper non-classical reality. Imperfecting expression reads them as the normal form of expression for indeterminate being. They are not anomalies; they are what expression looks like when it is the expression of indeterminate being.

  3. It unifies human creative expression and physical matter under a single ontological structure. MP's expression in human creativity is constitutively imperfect (the beginning's drive becomes clear only at the end; there is always more to be said). Morris's claim is that physical matter expresses itself in the same way — imperfectly, such that the imperfection is constitutive. Wild structures (see wild-structure) are expressive in this strong sense.

What It Rejects

  • Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles. Two things differing only numerically are not really two; identity is grounded in qualitative differentiation. Morris refuses this: indeterminate being does not require qualitative differentiation to be itself; its self-coincidence is not at stake.
  • "Maximize difference" as fundamental rule (Smolin's basic rule of change-dynamics). Morris reads "maximize difference" as a secondary description; the primary operation is the imperfecting expression by which indeterminate being expresses itself.
  • Imperfection as failure, deficit, or deviation. Morris insists imperfection is enabling, not failing. Without imperfection, there would be nothing for expression to do.
  • Determinate-identity monads as ontological bedrock. Smolin's framework treats monads as determinate identities; Morris's framework refuses such a bedrock.
  • Closed perfection of being (the "closure of being and history" against which MP "contends in all his books"). A perfect being would have no expressive latitude; imperfection is what allows being to be open.

Stakes

If imperfecting expression is accepted, two things change:

First, the philosophy of QM is freed from the choice between "determinate identities + weird relations" (Smolin and most realists) and "purely subjective probabilistic expectations" (QBism). Morris's third option: indeterminate being expressing itself imperfectly. The weirdness of QM is not an argument for determinate-identity-with-strange-relations or against realism in general; it is the form of indeterminate being's self-expression.

Second, MP's late-ontology framework — wild being, indeterminacy, écart, expression as paradox — is given a physical register. The wiki's existing pages on these concepts are heavily anchored in perception, language, embodiment, art. Imperfecting expression extends them into philosophy of physics. The extension is non-trivial: it does not import a metaphor; it claims that the structural concepts MP develops for human creativity are literally the concepts that govern subatomic dynamics.

The risk: imperfecting expression is asserted as the right principle rather than argued for. Why is the imperfection of expression what enables indeterminacy? Why is "imperfection" the right category rather than "negativity," "absence," "void," or "potency"? Morris does not engage these alternatives in the article. The principle's philosophical durability depends on subsequent development.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses the question of how being can be expressively creative without being either determinately closed (Leibniz, classical realism) or purely subjective (idealism, some forms of constructivism). Classical answers either:

  • Posit determinate identities (Leibnizian monads, Aristotelian ousia) and explain creativity through their relations and combinations — but this presupposes the bedrock as already-given;
  • Posit pure subjectivity (idealism, certain phenomenologies) and explain creativity through the subject's constituting activity — but this leaves objects and the natural world ontologically dependent on subjects.

Imperfecting expression offers a third path: being is neither determinate nor merely subjective; it is indeterminate-yet-expressive. The expressive activity is constitutively imperfect, and the imperfection is what allows being to be both real and creative. This is structurally close to MP's wild being, écart, and paradox of expression — but articulated specifically against Leibnizian determinate-identity ontologies and in dialogue with contemporary philosophy of physics.

Connections

  • deforms Smolin's neo-Leibnizian "maximize difference" principle.
  • grounded in melting-time / temps fondant — the indeterminate change-substrate that imperfecting expression operates from.
  • operationalized as wild-structure — wild structures' generative dynamics manifest imperfecting expression in their distribution of change-dynamics as time-forms.
  • operationalized through processioning — the temporal-distributive structure that imperfecting expression takes in physical matter.
  • radicalizes MP's expression — extends the paradox of expression from human creativity to physical matter; constitutive imperfection is what enables expression to be genuinely creative.
  • converges with MP's écart — the divergence-as-source-of-coupling structure of the écart is structurally close to the imperfection-as-enabler structure of imperfecting expression.
  • converges with MP's wild-being — wild being's indeterminacy is what imperfecting expression depends on.
  • contrasts with Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles and "maximize difference" rule.
  • contrasts with closure-of-being readings (which Morris attributes to Leibnizian and certain Heideggerian frameworks).
  • contrasts with "imperfection as failure" readings — Morris's principle is that imperfection is constitutive, not deficient.

Open Questions

  • Why "imperfection" and not "negativity," "absence," "potency," "impuissance"? Morris uses the silent-key term impuissance (wild-being §"Wild Being and Indeterminate Being" — to be added) at p. 158 and p. 168 to articulate indeterminate being's positive character. Why does the operative principle deform from impuissance into "imperfection"? The conceptual relations are not fully developed in the article.
  • Cross-source attestation. Morris is the wiki's only source for the principle. Subsequent uptake (or critique) by other philosophers of physics or by MP scholars working on philosophy of nature would test the principle's durability.
  • Relation to MP's "good ambiguity" / "bad ambiguity." MP's distinction between good ambiguity (productive openness) and bad ambiguity / ambivalence (pathological alternation) is structurally close to the distinction between imperfecting expression (constitutive imperfection) and failed expression (mere imperfection). Whether the two distinctions are doing the same work, or different work, is not addressed by Morris.
  • How does imperfecting expression generate the Born rule? Morris's note 11 says the leap-and-disparity between now and past gives reality to the Born rule; how the imperfecting-expression principle specifically generates the squared-amplitude probability law is not developed.
  • What about perfect expression? If imperfecting expression is constitutive of indeterminate being, what would perfect expression be — and is it ever possible? Morris does not engage this counterfactual directly. (Suggestive: perfect expression would be coincidence-with-what-is-expressed; this is the very thing MP's écart and Saint Aubert's épreuve mutuelle explicitly refuse — see ecart §"The écart is positive, not a failure of fusion".)

Sources

  • morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time — §6 develops the deformation of Smolin (pp. 167-168). The principle is articulated explicitly at p. 168: "The principle isn't maximizing difference but 'imperfecting expression'."
  • Indirect anchors via Morris:
    • Smolin Temporal relationalism (2018, arXiv) — the Leibnizian model deformed.
    • Smolin and Unger 2015 (The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time) — the broader Smolin framework.
    • MP on expression (PhP, Signs "Indirect Language," and the late ontology generally — see primordial-expression for the wiki's existing treatment).