"collective projection" is not the same thing as harmonious totality. I'm with you on emergence vs top-down. In any case projection, as you describe it, is an individual's non-generative formation of not-world out of pathe which is analgous to psychological projection in that its used as a crutch except that it can't be explained as the individual non-generatively-projecting as a way to satisfy its needs bc they're not omipotent. I still have no idea what projection means. I know you think the world is an illusion but that's about it.

Would a picture help?



The blob is the mess of pathe (though you can never really visually represent these things instead of living them). It shifts and turns and takes many shapes. Among the shapes it takes are the shape of a face and a tree, stand-ins for one's self identity as subject and for the external world. Both grown out of the same pathetic source, and both are in fact never separated from it; they are simply the feelings coagulating into a certain shape or quality. The philosopher zooms in on their interaction as if with a little box, and sees them as standing separately and coming into contact, ignoring the existence of pathe altogether (and insisting that their reintroduction is a kind of 'dualism' or 'supernaturalism' outside the sphere of the one world -- ontological monism). Life as lived includes not just what is outside of the philosopher's box, but also what is in it, and it is those shapes -- the projection of the tree is made up of colors and lights and tickling on the skin and all these very familiar sensations and neuroses.

The philosophical desire is one to externalize by pretending that there are no pathe, just the box. Of course, you can't really do this -- they've never been separated from the feeling to begin with, but are only playing at it.

Note that the whole blob, including the face and tree, are not a sort of universal pathos-ether, either -- this is all just one person, if you like. The mask and the tree get held up in opposition though they are both actually 'the same' thing, placed opposite one another, one projected away from the other (even though in fact there is no separation). Obsession with this structure comes from being unable to bear oneself and a demand for escape. Notice that the projection is then only a manifestation of these feelings, but that there is nothing, no center, in control of them or choosing what to form where. And an object is never actually successfully created -- and there is no other third thing, 'the illusion,' to be explained.

Yeah, tbh, I totally understand - and have understood - this model. And it admittedly had an elegance-in-its-inelegance - i think of it as a tgw version of the holy trinity. It has its own self-contained inner logic and the proper response to nonbelievers is a reiteration of how it works. The problem for me is that the model is very bad at explaining the constraints -especially intersubjective constraints - on how the pathe can form, of itself, worlds and processes. My approach has beena faux-naif attempt to ask questions that draw out these limitations. And the response is generally a host of qualifications that actually contradict this model. But when I try to highlight that this is happening you assume I must not understand your basic framework and reiterate it using exactly the same language your qualifications would forbid.

To take just one example: you stated admantly that pathe do *not* generate objects. & now, in your language, both identity and the world 'grow out' out of the pathe. When I try to ask pertinent questions, you immediately split semantic hairs. But if I try to meet you on that plain, I learn quickly that these are just metaphors and ways of talking that give out eventually.

Let me a bit cheeky and say that this reminds me a lot of how realists talk about the 'real world' when confronted with its limitations.

I also think you might think I'm trying to reinstate a naive idea of the cosmos as already-there. I'm not. I'm with you half the way. Your model strikes me as kind of island of the lotus eaters. A pleasant stop that denies anything outside of it and offers a promise of release (here you might say no no no the pathe are agonizing brute facts whether there's world or not. But the kingdom of god is always just offstage). If I argue vehemently against you, it's because I'm arguing also against the part of me that wants to deny in order to salvage the elsewhere. How's that for solipsism

The problem for me is that the model is very bad at explaining the constraints -especially intersubjective constraints - on how the pathe can form, of itself, worlds and processes. — csalisbury

John 3:8:

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

I have ideas about this, but they're very difficult to put into words. I don't know if I've ever talked to you about the blind fountain, but that is the idea I'm focused on developing. There is an 'explanation,' but it's not of the sort that most would be willing to accept, and it goes along with a kind of epistemic humility, even isolation and loneliness.

On the one hand, I don't think it's a shortcoming of an account to say 'I don't know how it works' if that is the correct thing to say. The purpose of good epistemology is not to make up stories about what we know, but to give an accurate account of what and how we know. There are some points on which I think a skepticism or even a negative dogmatism in the vein of the Cyrenaics is in order. But that doesn't mean we just don't talk about it. It's important to enrich and flesh out these new metaphors.

My approach has beena faux-naif attempt to ask questions that draw out these limitations. And the response is generally a host of qualifications that actually contradict this model. But when I try to highlight that this is happening you assume I must not understand your basic framework and reiterate it using exactly the same language your qualifications would forbid. — csalisbury

Well if your questions are allowed to be naif why can't my answers be? I can only give back what I get. If you have things you really want to ask, really ask them then.

To take just one example: you stated admantly that pathe do *not* generate objects. & now, in your language, both identity and the world 'grow out' out of the pathe. — csalisbury

Does the picture not make that intelligible?

Think of it like the cave, again. There are two ways to answer 'where does the urn I see come from?' You can play along and say it comes from the light behind, or you can say 'let me stop you there, because there's no urn.' I don't see any tension in speaking in these two ways, just different registers. If you want me to go permanently into the 'esoteric' register (the exoteric/esoteric split is a big part of Christianity) I can do that, but then you have to be charitable and not give commonsense objections like 'so what, there's no acorns? do you really believe that?' and so on.

I don't think it's a shortcoming of an account to say 'I don't know how it works' if that is the correct thing to say. The purpose of good epistemology is not to make up stories about what we know, but to give an accurate account of what and how we know [...] But that doesn't mean we just don't talk about it. It's important to enrich and flesh out these new metaphors. — tgw

I agree. I also think it's good to hypothesize and say 'maybe it's like this' and then see how well the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny. But I sometimes feel like you take the more severe approach of suggesting not only that you don't know, but that we can't, in principle know - and that it any case it doesn't matter.

Well if your questions are allowed to be naif why can't my answers be? I can only give back what I get. If you have things you really want to ask, really ask them then. — tgw

I suppose that's fair. I thought it would be better to try to work things out according to the immanent logic of your account, because you tend to be immediately dismissive of anything else.

Does the picture not make that intelligible?

no no no, of course the picture makes it intelligible. It was intelligible before the picture. What I'm objecting to is what appears to me a reluctance to apply your model to concrete examples in good faith by arbitrarily precluding certain language and metaphors that you yourself have recourse to.


What's the blind fountain?

But I sometimes feel like you take the more severe approach of suggesting not only that you don't know, but that we can't, in principle know - and that it any case it doesn't matter. — csalisbury

I do, this is the ancient opposition between skepticism, which suspends belief regarding a possibility, and negative dogmatism, which pronounces negatively on a possibility. I'm not a skeptic, I think there are things we know, and other things I'm willing to pronounce aren't known or knowable.

I suppose that's fair. I thought it would be better to try to work things out according to the immanent logic of your account, because you tend to be immediately dismissive of anything else. — csalisbury

I barely ever talk about this stuff, and not to anyone I know. I have philosophical fatigue. Important things can't be shared anyway, and philosophy at this level has no rigor, and is just a bunch of arguments from incredulity and mythologizing. I'd mostly rather practice than argue, which is why religion starts to be more interesting.

When there is a criticism that attempts to engage with the position itself (which is the only kind of criticism there is in my view -- all criticism is internal), I try to go with it, but I'm having trouble seeing the problems.

It was intelligible before the picture. What I'm objecting to is what appears to me a reluctance to apply your model to concrete examples in good faith by arbitrarily precluding certain language and metaphors that you yourself have recourse to. — csalisbury

Well, I think the metaphors can be dropped once you get it. Once you see, it's not like you need to keep rehearsing the metaphors in your head. Work in metaphor happens on the frontier of your understanding -- I don't have metaphors for water and people, they're just part of my life, and every metaphor happens in terms of something I don't have a metaphor for.

If the tension in the metaphors bothers you, you can replace the 'object' that 'grows' with 'purported object' or 'projection' (as in, a projection on a screen of an image, which insofar as one takes it to be a thing other than such an image is not what it purports to be). But talking that way all the time gets tiring.

What's the blind fountain? — csalisbury

The blind fountain is the closest thing I entertain to a metaphysical model of the universe. The basic idea is that all action is coercive, so that we're all solely passive with respect to ourselves (we have no control, except indirectly through coercion of others), but solely active with respect to others (we do not feel what they feel, their 'passions'). So there is no 'world' in that things are fundamentally split with respect to the active/passive distinction, and there is no place in which all these things come together. Everyone/thing is simultaneously completely alone and utterly dependent on an unknown 'outside.' The condition of our being 'together' is the condition of our being 'alone.' So there is no source of things, no transcendental root or laws, just endless fractured coercion, with everything being a 'source' with respect to everything else, and no common arena in which it all takes place. This allows for the possibility of genuine novelty and the ultimate impotence of all explanation.

I also think the structure effectively acts to perpetually exacerbate and propagate endless suffering, but that's more of a religious flourish.

I like the 'blind fountain' concept. It reminds me a lot of Deleuze's 'rhizome'

A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles[...] A rhizome has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature[...] Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the supposed will of an artist or puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fibers, which form another puppet in other dimensions connected to the first: "Call the strings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might be objected that its multiplicity resides in the person of the actor, who projects it into the text. Granted; but the actor’s nerve fibers in turn form a weave. And they fall through the gray matter, the grid, into the undifferentiated [...]The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind, an animal, human beings[...]a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure[...]A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo[...]The tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, "and . . . and . . . and. . ."[...]American literature, and already English literature, manifest this rhizomatic direction to an even greater extent; they know how to move between things, establish a logic of the AND, overthrow ontology, do away with foundations, nullify endings and beginnings. They know how to practice pragmatics. The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed. Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle.- A Thousand Plateaus — Deleuze

I do think that you can do away with a 'common arena' but still have 'connection.' I think back to my improv days or of my yearly xmas gathering with friends, where we go to a rural camp and drink and 'shoot the shit' and everyone kind of syncs to a rhythm of joking and telling stories. Jam sessions or Jazz. In these settings each person's contribution becomes a source for someone else's -and all according to an immanently generated rhythm.

I don't think we're born alone. Or at least - we're born always looking toward someone else. Usually Mom takes the role. It's true that there may be no one to fill the role. But then the baby dies. Importantly, this is not just about being burped or getting fed. Infants need a kind of subjective source of affection - they need to mother's face, mirroring etc. Being able to be alone comes much later, if we survive infancy. And even then the way we're alone always involves someone else.

Anyway, this is what I was getting at with the 'transitional object.' The model as presented in your picture is utterly solipsistic. But the actual human infant depends on the pre-existing projections of someone else in order to themselves project. And so forth all the way down.

I don't think we're born alone. Or at least - we're born always looking toward someone else. Usually Mom takes the role. It's true that there may be no one to fill the role. But then the baby dies. Being able to be alone comes much later, if we survive infancy. And even then the way we're alone always involves someone else. — csalisbury

People are more or less born solipsists, and have to develop a theory of mind -- I'm not sure that an infant is ever 'looking toward someone else' in anything more than the banal sense that it needs someone else to take care of it, or in the sense that as soon as it's born it's already maturating toward the development of a theory of mind. As autism becomes increasingly severe, you can see what it looks like to remain more and more in that solipsistic state, and never to get a grasp on the theory of mind.

The idea that we're all alone in the end I take to be one of the major competing literary outlooks on life that's been around probably as long as people have, not something radical or new. The realization of one's loneliness and the unsatisfactoriness of other people is a major driving force in literature & mythology, and some modern Western takes on it can be found as sub-themes in e.g. Heart of Darkness or The Awakening. I mention all this just as a point of reference to where I'm coming from -- I see this as a kind of informal existential tradition (that Schop. would surely fit into).

Anyway this is what I was getting at with the 'transitional object.' The model as presented in your picture is utterly solipsistic. But the actual human infant depends on the pre-existing projections of someone else in order to project. And so forth all the way down. — csalisbury

As I said, the model just reflects one person. And that person doesn't suffer the 'outside,' because they're only passive w.r.t. themselves. They can coerce other people, but can't feel them. I think the feeling of other people being there is a kind of halfway state, where your coercive actions receive enough passive feedback that you get a kind of pleasant loop going, and that's person-to-person interaction (mutual coercion). The pleasure of being around someone else is the pleasure of something being alien enough that it can coerce you, but not so alien that it can't respond to your coercive tendencies in ways you can reciprocate. But all that doesn't mean you get free of the 'ultimate' loneliness, which isn't a coherent thing to ask for -- to assimilate the other person entirely would just be to talk to yourself again, which isn't what you want, and so you have to be alone in order for there to be 'other' people, contra the naive realist who sees other people as things like rocks that you directly see (and so everything is 'public').

I agree there is a dependence there, even a radical dependence, and we're utterly passive with respect to our own creation (we're creatures, ens creata in the Christian sense). The fallacy I see with traditional notions of this dependence is that it assumes this dependence requires some kind of meaningful connection or shared world. On the contrary, it's what makes everyone alone. And trying to bridge that gap by being around other people is seductive, but ultimately always unsatisfying, like everything else in life.

That Deleuze quote is hard to understand. All I'd say is the notion of 'outside' I mean isn't really comparable to a plant's nourishment being physically outside of it. 'Between' also makes me uncomfortable, because it seems to propose a single space.

Off to work, but, quickly, I edited my above post to point out that infant's needs involve affection, not simply food. You may disagree but you've got an uphill battle against just about every developmental psychologist out there. They need love coming from somewhere else.

And quickly, regarding Deleuze, I think its important to extend the same charity to the metaphors of others that we extend to our own. Deleuze explicitly addresses your concern about space. I agree that the Deleuze quote is hard to understand, it's got something of the avant garde manifesto about it. But I think he's saying a lot of the same things you are. And he's probably saying some things you're not, and you're probably saying some things he isn't. But, then, that's what it's like reading or talking to anyone, even those whom you have a lot in common with.

And I certainly don't mean to suggest that we get to escape the 'ultimate loneliness,' only to suggest that the pain of that ultimate loneliness derives from a memory of connection, and that the experience of it usually involves others. Cioran & Thoreau write for the public, the anchorite looks to God, you post here etc.

An infant might need certain stimulations associated with genuine affection -- whether or not any genuine affection has to be behind them is a different matter. Could you maturate a child appropriately in a simulacrum of the appropriate heat and sound? I don't know, but it's hard for me to see why the giver of affection is relevant to that, rather than the result of the giving, which might be provided by other means.

Could you maturate a child appropriately in a simulacrum of the appropriate heat and sound?

Probably not. Babies (even newborns, even hours-old newborns) seem to need (expressive) faces. I think that suggests the baby needs something they experience as an emotional source, a bestower, not just a touch or soundwaves. I think you can have a sense of a source without quite having a theory of mind.

So, then I guess the question would be whether you could maturate a child appropriately in a simulacrum of appropriate heat, sound, and faciality. Maybe with really sophisticated technology and a lot of research? (My hunch is it would take a lot of work to learn all the nuances babies are aware of, just as we're only recently begun to understand the nuances of how the infant appreciaties the maternal face)But, I think that, even in this case, it would remain a (very primitive) I-thou relationship. Or, perhaps more accurately a [jumble of pain/pleasure/hunger/fear/love/]-thou relationship. In a similar vein, the 'test' of a turning test is precisely whether it gives you the sense of someone 'there.'

As I said, the model just reflects one person.

Right, but my sense is that this model begins to disintegrate as soon as you try to try to apply it to intersubjective situations, especially cooperative ones. So, for instance, could you give a sketch of how to extend your model to account for a professional basketball game (two teams playing and an audience)?

Probably not. Babies (even newborns, even hours-old newborns) seem to need (expressive) faces. I think that suggests the baby needs something they experience as an emotional source, a bestower, not just a touch or soundwaves. I think you can have a sense of a source without quite having a theory of mind. — csalisbury

But experiencing something as an emotional source isn't the same as it being one. Put another way -- do you think all babies that grow up without being loved are developmentally disabled? Perhaps it makes life harder not to be loved from an early age, but this strikes me as an implausibly strong claim.

In a similar vein, the 'test' of a turning test is precisely whether it gives you the sense of someone 'there.' — csalisbury

The Turing test has already been passed by simulated psychologists that basically just ask back what you say to them. If that's all you need for the presence of someone being 'there,' then it's quite weak in the sense that it doesn't really require anyone being there. I think for the most part people live as practical solipsists in day to day life, and only attribute to others the bare minimum they need to interact with them, while in some sense being convinced they're the only real people. Or at least that's what their actions seem to suggest most of the time. The rest is taken care of by powerful psychological projection, and genuine sonder is a bit rarer (maybe it occurs with family members and close friends).

Right, but my sense is that this model begins to disintegrate as soon as you try to try to apply it to intersubjective situations, especially cooperative ones. So, for instance, could you give a sketch of how to extend your model to account for a professional basketball game (two teams playing and an audience)? — csalisbury

Again there's a question of whether you need a common model to show how interactions work. For example, does a symbiotic creature act any differently from a lone one? Probably not -- most have no idea that they interact with another organism or depend on it for survival at all, yet the symbiotic relationship works just fine. There is no transcendental 'glue' holding these things together. It's not that it works because of some commonality, but rather that on observation we see a commonality because it works.

do you think all babies that grow up without being loved are developmentally disabled? Perhaps it makes life harder not to be loved from an early age, but this strikes me as an implausibly strong claim.

Actually, yes. There's a famous study by Rene Spitz, following infants raised in orphanages, who had their basic needs met, but had minimal human contact. Nearly all of them were severely developmentally disabled.

I think for the most part people live as practical solipsists in day to day life, and only attribute to others the bare minimum they need to interact with them

By practical solipsists, then, you mean people who neither think about the vast complexity and deep humanity nor form deep connections with the people they interact with in passing?

Again there's a question of whether you need a common model to show how interactions work. For example, does a symbiotic creature act any differently from a lone one? Probably not -- most have no idea that they interact with another organism or depend on it for survival at all, yet the symbiotic relationship works just fine. There is no transcendental 'glue' holding these things together. It's not that it works because of some commonality, but rather that on observation we see a commonality because it works.

It seems to me that an organism that has no idea its interacting with other organisms is a poor metaphor for what goes on in a basketball game. But that's fine if there's no 'transcendental glue' holding everything together. I'm not asking you which ways of thinking about a basketball game are bad. I'm asking you to provide your own account

Actually, yes. There's a famous study by Rene Spitz, following infants raised in orphanages, who had their basic needs met, but who had minimal human contact. Nearly all of them were severely developmentally disabled. — csalisbury

That's interesting. It raises the question of what would happen if the relevant proxies for actual contact were introduced.

By practical solipsists, then, you mean people who neither think about the vast complexity and deep humanity nor form deep connections with the people they interact with in passing? — csalisbury

Sure -- one way to think about it is that people's behavior wouldn't change that much if everyone in the background were replaced with robots that just passed by. There are a select few people that for any intent or purpose people endow with 'full humanity' on a daily basis, and even then seemingly not as much as they do for themselves. It's simply not relevant for affected action most of the time that other people are people rather than fixtures of the physical world like the sidewalk. The vast majority of person-person relations pass each other by totally unnoticed.

I also think that a large amount of people do not have anyone they treat as fully human, either due to psychological inability or resistance to it, or from simple lack of human contact or genuine relationships.

It seems to me that organisms who have no idea they're interacting with other organism is a poor metaphor for what goes on in a basketball game. — csalisbury

Is it though? Have you played online games? There's another human coordinating with you on the other end opponent or teammate, but without voice chat or someone sitting next to you it feels very little like a 'human presence,' and in advanced games it's hard to tell whether you're fighting an AI or a person absent this. I play a few fighting games and am familiar with the phenomenology -- I imagine something similar happens in FPSes and RTSes. Basketball games are different in that there are human bodies running around, maybe -- but that's just because body-robots are harder to make than fighting-game input robots. People display more 'quirks' and make more humanlike 'errors' in fighting games, and have a noticeable propensity for very top-level strategizing (and wild shifts in strategy) that computers generally don't in these games. But in many games, these differences just do not show through, and even as someone who plays a certain game a lot, in many instances I wouldn't be able to tell if I was playing another person or a very good AI.

I'm not sure how interesting it is that you could replace people in the crowd with robots and no one would notice. I'd notice if you replaced my coworkers, my bartender, my family, my friends, my barber etc. etc. Am I exquisitely attuned to the depths of any of those besides some friends and family? Not really. I think there's a substantial difference between that and practical solipsism. This is a move you make a lot. Either people are super-empaths deeply emotionally attuned to the plumbless depths of everyone or they're practical solipsists. Psychoanalysts call this way of thinking "splitting."

I don't understand the point you're trying to make about RTS AIs being hard to distinguish from human players. I'm asking you to explain, using your blob-model, how a basketball game works, which you still haven't done.

Am I exquisitely attuned to the depths of any of those besides some friends and family? Not really. I think there's a substantial difference between that and practical solipsism. This is a move you make a lot. Either people are super-empaths deeply emotionally attuned to the plumbless depths of everyone or they're practical solipsists. Psychoanalysts call this way of thinking "splitting." — csalisbury

I think getting through the day doesn't really require treating other people with anything close to the humanity people are forced to grant themselves, and for the most part people don't do it.

Just to give a simple example, when people criticize their political opponents, they literally show an inability to attribute to them the intelligence, internal life, and human faculties that they attribute to themselves. The same goes for simple interactions on the street -- people have a kind of chronic inability to see someone who bumps into them as having the same fault as they do when they bump into someone else. I don't think I've made any ridiculous binary splits like you suggest. This is a perfectly ordinary observation.

I don't understand the point you're trying yo make about RTS AIs being hard to distinguish from human players. I'm asking you to explain, using your blob-model, how a basketball game works, which you still haven't done. — csalisbury

I don't really understand what you think needs explaining. There are a lot of levels at which you could describe a basketball game. Honestly, I don't even know all of the rules of basketball, so I would be bad at explaining it generally.

Well, you made the claim that basically everyone is a practical solipsist almost all of the time. I don't see the demonization and dehumanization of one's enemies (which is a sad thing but something different) or reacting irrationally to getting bumped into on the sidewalk as particularly compelling evidence for pervasive practical solipsism, but maybe we're just tuned to different frequencies.

Yeah, basketball, like many sports, can get byzantine, so let's suppose a simplified version. You work with your teammates to throw a basketball into a hoop and against the other team to make sure they don't the same.

I can understand your blob model when imagining people doing things on their own. In a basketball game, it seems very clear to me that it's necessary at every moment for the participants' projections to be in sync in very specific ways. And the projections of the audience, who can't foresee the course of the game in advance, seem entirely reliant on the projections of the basketball players, who, along with the ball are the game.

People's projections all seem incredibly tied to each other's in this case. For the players to play, they have to be in sync. For the audience to watch and understand, they all have to project something similar (they can talk to each other about this or that play) and be constrained by the actions and projections of those playing.

I'm assuming the 'blobs' of one person, for you, don't connect to the blobs of other people. So, like, what's going on?

Nota Bene: Saying that one need not suppose a common space or a 'transcendental glue' isn't an answer, but a restriction on what the answer can be.

For the players to play, they have to be in sync. — csalisbury

Don't symbiotic creatures have to be in sync? Yet they do what they do alone, without awareness of the other.

People's projections all seem incredibly tied to each other's in this case. For the players to play, they have to be in sync. For the audience to watch and understand, they all have to project something similar (they can talk to each other about this or that play) and be constrained by the actions and projections of those playing. — csalisbury

They affect each other and maybe they rely on each other in important ways, but that doesn't mean there's any common arena in which they meet, or that they have to realize this relationship is happening or take it to be such a relationship. You respond as you do the same way as you would if alone.

This is the point of the blind fountain, everything can be in perfect 'sync' while completely isolated (in fact, these two things go together).

Don't symbiotic creatures have to be in sync? Yet they do what they do alone, without awareness of the other.

Do you think people can play a basketball game without awareness of each other?

They affect each other and maybe they rely on each other in important ways, but that doesn't mean there's any common arena in which they meet, or that they have to realize this relationship is happening or take it to be such a relationship. You respond as you do the same way as you would if alone.

How do people affect each other if the 'blobs' don't intersect? I honestly don't understand how you reconcile nothin-but-pathe with this interaction. It seems unintelligible to me.

Do you think people can play a basketball game without awareness of each other? — csalisbury

Yes. That was the point of the AI fighting game example. All that you need is for two people to make the appropriate motions, and those motions can be triggered by private affections.

How do people affect each other if the 'blobs' don't intersect? I honestly don't understand how you reconcile nothin-but-pathe with this interaction. It seems unintelligible to me. — csalisbury

One coerces the other and it coerces reciprocally in turn. None of this requires awareness of what is going on with the other. An order emerges without any connection or sympathy.

Yes. That was the point of the AI fighting game example. All that you need is for two people to make the appropriate motions, and those motions can be triggered by private affections.

I still don't understand the video game example. It seems like a weird choice, given what I know of your view. In a video game, there's a graphical interface which is identical for all players. Various players provide input through their controller or keyboard, and this input can have no have effect on the inputs of other unless these inputs are mediated by that shared interface. This is the model you want to use?

To take a very simple, concrete moment of a basketball game. One player passes the ball to his teammate. One player has to project another player passing the ball. But the player passing the ball, in his own blob, can have no effect on the projections - or blob -of the other. Or he can, through 'coercion'. But how can he 'coerce' his teammate unless his teammate projects him coercing (e.g., in this case, sees him pass the basketball?

an order arises without connection and sympathy

No angle with this question, just sincerely curious. Do you think connection and sympathy exist at all?

I still don't understand the video game example. It seems like a weird choice, given what I know of your view. In a video game, there's a graphical interface which is identical for all players. Various players provide input through their controller or keyboard, and this input can have no have effect on the inputs of other unless these inputs are mediated by that shared interface. This is the model you want to use? — csalisbury

Whether there's an interface doesn't matter. The point is that the players can coordinate on a game in such a way that they can't tell whether they are so coordinating (because they can't tell whether they're facing an AI or human). You have reactions that lead to inputs on both sides, but no real 'communication' or common space between the players that keeps this together. Just like English speakers can all articulate 'r' differently and never realize it, yet coordinate a language without having to sync up their mouths.

One player has to project another player passing the ball. — csalisbury

I don't know about that. I played basketball as a kid, and I never 'projected' anything when people passed to me. I more just knew how to move my body.

Or he can, through 'coercion'. But how can he 'coerce' his teammate unless his teammate projects him coercing (e.g., in this case, sees him pass the basketball? — csalisbury

He just needs to cause certain spasms in the teammate that prompt him to move, and he can do that by moving. In practice yes human players see each other, obviously -- but what I'm saying is this is an accidental feature of a game taking place. Insofar as the whole world is a game, very little of it is kept going in this way (cooperatively & with mutual understanding).

No angle with this question, just sincerely curious. Do you think connection and sympathy exist at all? — csalisbury

Yes, but they're exceptional. I think it happens when people, instead of blindly coercing each other, so to speak, look at each other and form a kind of coercive loop where they get an increasing intimacy of feedback. Human intimacy acts as a sort of drug, I don't know if its good or bad, some people go crazy without it, and almost everyone seems to get exhausted of it after a time. There's a kind of need to bring something alien into oneself, but it can't really work. It needs to hit a sweetspot of an alien thing hovering just out of reach, close enough to form this loop and so understand and respond to it, but not so close that you're just talking to yourself again or projecting. Trying to maintain this delicate balance gives people a sort of high that temporary alleviates their more neutral state of loneliness. But it ultimately aims at something impossible and so the high has to come down, sometimes painfully. Longtime friends who give each other space would be the ideal setup.

Longtime friends who give each other space would be the ideal setup.

I've felt this same way for a while. I think good marriages are this (though they're probably rare.) I've had this fantasy for a while of coming into money somehow and buying a big house and building cottages around it where all my friends (and me) can stay. Everyone has their own cottage. The house itself would be the 'public' place where people go when they want to hang out with others.

Whether there's an interface doesn't matter....You have reactions that lead to inputs on both sides, but no real 'communication' or common space between the players that keeps this together.

The interface doesn't matter? Can you imagine a fighting game without a graphical interface? I mean, I've gotten good enough at a few video games to understand you can reach a kind of flow where you may be totally unaware of e.g. Ryu's headband because you're so immersed in the rhythm and intricacies of the fight itself. But if the screen (and the shared graphic interface) dies, the game's over.

Just like English speakers can all articulate 'r' differently and never realize it, yet coordinate a language without having to sync up their mouths.

Yeah, as long as there's some shared experience everyone's in on and wants to talk about, the differences in 'r' articulations are lost. But the thing is that coordination requires something shared, even if its only a directedness.

I don't know about that. I played basketball as a kid, and I never 'projected' anything when people passed to me. I more just knew how to move my body.

Weird, I played basketball as a kid too and was always quite consciously aware of where the other players were and who had the ball etc. In terms of catching and throwing the ball, yeah, I just knew how to move my body. But that was always integrated with the conscious awareness of where others were. Maybe you were just a better basketball player than me. (Or maybe - though I hope not -this is that thing, again, where I try to use you terminology, in your sense, but all of a sudden you respond to those words as though you've never used them in special contexts)

Insofar as the whole world is a game, very little of it is kept going in this way (cooperatively & with mutual understanding).

If a basketball game can take place, one's metaphysical model has to be able to explain how that's possible, even if it's rare.

If a basketball game can take place, one's metaphysical model has to be able to explain how that's possible, even if it's rare. — csalisbury

I don't think basketball games are rare, but I also don't think they're really interesting examples of intersubjectivity. You can play basketball superbly without caring much at all about your teammates as people or attributing much of an inner life to them.

If you want an account of the rarer cases, I've already started with what I said before -- about there being a kind of coercive feedback loop.

Yeah, but I'm not really looking for an account of intimacy rn. I'm still trying to understand how intersubjectivity (or inter-affectivity) works at all. This is the thread I'm really interested in -->

csal: how can he 'coerce' his teammate unless his teammate projects him coercing?
tgw: He just needs to cause certain spasms in the teammate that prompt him to move, and he can do that by moving.

I'm still trying to reconcile this with the idea of each person being their own blob of pathe which never intersects with the blobs of others. Their pathe have nothing in common. How can his pathe cause spasms in my pathe? The video game metaphor is still very confusing to me -video games relies on inputs and shared interface. Since you don't want anything shared, I guess you need to have each user to input directly into the other's pathe. How?

How about something like a local, immanently generated, field of resonance which 'attunes' pathe to one another? If everyone's in a locked room with no window (for the 'window' is an illusory there-ing which (pretends it) externalizes the purely internal), I don't see how anyone could ever coerce anyone else?

I don't see how anyone could ever coerce anyone else? — csalisbury

But that's precisely the point You don't see how. And you won't, because there is no common place for you to see in which it comes together. The lack of a thread manifests as the end of your passivity and so your ignorance.

Well I agree that being coerced ultimately hinges on our unawareness of how we're being coerced.

What I want to say is this. For a basketball game to take place each participant has to illusion (makeshift verb) in a similar way. There's the ball, the hoop etc. This is a clear condition of possibility for a basketball game's taking place. If you want to claim that each player in a game doesn't have a very similar hoop or ball projection, I'm gonna say I straight up don't believe you believe that. Almost any cooperative endeavor necessitates our experiencing similar worlds which, (I labor this point only bc I feel you require me too) need not have independent ontological integrity, outside the pathe of the collaborators.

You make it quite clear that objects (not-objects, nobjects) are nothing but externalizing-processes which we use to try to escape our inner turmoil. That's fine. In that case we externalize many things in very similar ways.

I think this raises the interesting question of how this is possible. And I think the answer lies in the fact that the infant can't grow to project a robust world unless a world-projecting being lovingly inducts him into one.

For a basketball game to take place each participant has to illusion (makeshift verb) in a similar way. — csalisbury

No, I disagree. Getting people to move in a certain way doesn't require they have similar subjective experiences of that movement at all.

That's fine. In that case we externalize many things in very similar ways. — csalisbury

Again, I disagree. I think the extent of this similarity is exaggerated.