Seeing red

[Angrboda]

What makes a thing what it is, is the types of economies/systems described above.

I don’t see how a materialist can justify dividing all of physical reality into discrete objects and distinguishable processes, each with unique features, without either 1) taking those divisions for granted or 2) tacitly relying on universal attributes that transcend particular instances as defining criteria.

Or maybe that's just how our minds divide things up for reasons which have to do with the evolution of our brains.  Take it for granted?  Sure, because that's what our brains do.  I can no more step outside of that than I can fly.

My philosophy doesn't lack first principles.   It incorporates different first principles than yours does. There is simply random and/or ordered change and its description in my world.

You are stating what has been obvious to all even before Parmenides and Heraclitus: change happens. The very first question of philosophy has always been about how things can persist in their being and still be subject to change.  As I recall, you answer has generally been that they just do, i.e. brute facts.

That is your choice. All I ask is that you do not fool yourself into thinking that making that existential choice serves as a rational alternative to the contrary position, which is to say, that some principle(s) constrain the operations of change and also support existence.

And don't fool yourself into thinking that the contrary position is a rational decision either, regardless of what "reasonable men" might conclude.  It's simply an arbitrary choice. And lacking any real evidence of the supposed mover informing it, seems prima facie irrational.

Second, you focus on describing the changes. That’s a noble pursuit. It doesn’t touch on the ultimate causes, though. You’ve already given up on those. To quote:

I don't concern myself with why something is the kind of thing that it is and why it changes at all because under my first principles, there is no 'why'.

Indeed. For you there is no “why?”

Is there a point in there somewhere?