First, you need to make sure that you're not conflating "personal identity" with the more general, logical notion of identity. I'm not sure that you're not conflating the two. They're two different ideas.

Fair enough. One might think that 'personal identity' is a subclass of the much broader class of 'identity' but if there is no identity over time, then personal identity is just a way of talking. The 'identity' part of 'personal identity' is far too loose. Yes? Personal identity literally can have nothing to do with identity if identity doesn't persist across time. Do you agree?

Let's look at each of your connections with reference to this central question. Why should nervous alex (Alex1) be nervous about becoming tortured Alex (Alex2)?

1. Causal connection. The executioner's feeling of duty is causally connected to Alex's anguish. Does that mean that the executioner should be nervous about the torture he himself is to soon feel, being causally connected it? Clearly not. So causal connection does not get at the matter.

2.Contiguity. The executioner's blade is contiguous with alex's flesh, both in space and in time. Does that mean the blade should be nervous about the torture it is to soon feel. Clearly not. So contiguity does not get at the matter.

3. memory. If nervous Alex is aware he'll be knocked unconscious prior to execution and given a drug that'll prevent recollection, would he be right not to be nervous about the impending torture (since, at that time, he won't remember earlier states?) Clearly not. So memory does not get at the matter.

4. Sense of self. Well what is this? Is the sense of self a physical thing? Is it a brain state? But if it's a brain state the only way it can extend across multiple brain states is to be connected. Through what? Through a sense of self! But what is a sense of self. Is it a brain state? But if it's a brain state...

You don't need the brain state part. Just simply, any x at T1 isn't identical to "x" at T2. That's what it means to not buy identity through time.

Clearly you don't need the brain-state part to talk about identity-over-time in general, but we're talking about identity apropos of brain states and consciousness.

That something is non-identical through time doesn't imply that there's no connection through time.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by a connection which isn't related to identity? Alex 1 and Alex 2 aren't the same person, they're just connected, is that right? Can you explain how that works? I hope you won't say that I know quite well what you're talking about. People tend to do that same thing with Qualia or the sense of having a soul. It just won't do!

Right. I don't buy identity through time.

Ok, got you.

If Alex has brain state 1 at one time and brain state 2 at another time, then we're talking about two different Alexs. Thus if nervous Alex (brain state 1) is nervous because he is about to be tortured (this will be agonizing brain state 2) (I'm abstracting here! of course there are multiple brain states throughout!) then he is confused. He won't be the one being tortured. There's nothing to worry about.

Is this fair? If not, why not?

And the countless brain states throughout an individuals life aren't identical to one another, right?

You might expect someone with username The17thStateUniversityBro to have a very specific outlook on this question - but don't judge a book by its cover!

So, since we're talking 15 minutes here, it would be fair to say that an individual goes through a lot of brain states throughout their life?

(Especially since even this 15 minute long state is an 'abstraction,' which suggests that it's just a way we have of thinking and talking about things, something that isn't quite accurate. Unless you're saying that the abstraction itself exists? Everything points, in your account, to there being only very short pre-abstracted states/processes (which are always changing, so never fully the same.) Already we're in murky territory - can brain-states be abstractions? If something is constantly changing and never static, then how do we determine whether it's the same as itself? -but we can pass this over for now. And we probably should.)

Thank you. I understand that you feel pounced-upon, and I understand that any individual poster has limited bandwidth, especially when under siege. That being said, it's the second set of questions I'm really interested in.

How long can a brain-state last? Are we using the term right when we talk of a 35 year long brain state?

And does a person have the same brain-state for the entirety of their life?

If these questions seem faux-naif, I'll admit they are, but walk with me down this path?

I'm not trying to counter your view with another (because I quite sincerely don't have one, just some confusions). I'm trying to get you to articulate your own.

Good to hear. Would you be willing to answer the other questions I posed? Or not worth it?

I still want to understand more about brain states, consciousness and personal identity!

Nothing at all unusual, just the normal sense of "state:" the particular (dynamic) conditions, that is, the particular set of materials and their (dynamic) relations at a set of contiguous points of time (or abstracted as a single point of time).

I'm not sure quite what work 'dynamic' is doing here. States, as I understand them, are generally static. Or at least to consider something qua state, is to consider it through the lens of certain fixed properties. Anyway would it be fair to say that 'states' as you here define them could equally be called 'processes'?

But granting this vague dynamism you mention, how long does a brain state last? Can brain states last hours? days? weeks? months?

And, perhaps more to the point, does a single brain state persist for the life of an individual - such that we could say to be Alex is to have brain-state-alex?

I don't think it's irrelevant.

Your consciousness, your sense of self, etc. are simply brain states re your particular brain.

I know you're not impressed by the OP's line of thought. Rather than try to sway you to that line of thinking, I think it'd be more fruitful to ask you to elaborate your own. What do you mean by 'states'?

I actually started a thread on the old philosophy forums site about this very thing. I have that OP saved somewhere, I'll try to dig it up.

Honestly, this same problem has pestered me for a long time so it'a kind of a weird relief to see someone else independently come across it. I still want to hone and clarify it, because it usually is met with immediate dismissal - which I understand. You have to really delicately draw out the aporias of identity to show why those rejoinders miss the mark and I think I'm still failing to do that well. But I'm always trying to work on a clear articulation of this idea. It's so much more interesting and difficult than it first appears!

The OP's question is actually really good and more intractable than it appears, imo. All the answers along the line of well you won't exist after you die, and you didn't exist before you were born, while true, miss the point.

This response, in particular, encapsulates the confusion:.

"So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies."

Ironically, it's those arguing against the OP's coherence who cling most to old and ancient ideas about identity and the simplicity/unity of the soul. They're confusing "I" or "me" qua persistent self-identity (as in "I am Jake") with the actual question - which is about the emergence of conscious existence from non-existence - i.e. it's about the emergence of an (indefinite) process of identification, not of some specific, definite identity.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar.

Yeah, I'm down for an extension, I got burnt out on V & P for a bit and had to take a break, but I'd like to still finish.

if people are free to speak their mind, harvard's likewise free to establish and enforce rules of conduct - it's not illegal to make a fuckability index of your coworkers and share it, but you'd be an idiot, when scandal broke, to try to save yourself by explaining the first amendment to HR.

Anyway, this isn't about Harvard or its students, its about grinding a boring old axe.

- when you zip up too early in the bathroom at work and you get a little dime-sized spot on your crotch and now you can't leave the bathroom because someone will notice the spot but can't stay in the bathroom because someone will notice your absence.

- when you smoke weed in an unfamiliar setting, at a house party, and it suddenly hits you hard - and this song starts playing and you realize there are all these emotions you've always had but had entirely forgotten about - you're really starting to feel these emotions now, vividly - and you start to think 'whoa, wait, have all these other people been experiencing these emotions the whole time, and I haven't?? - and so have I, like, been almost literally living in a different world than them, but *thinking* I was in the same world?? - and they just didn't realize I wasn't in the same world?? - but - like - they can tell right now, can't they - are they looking at me? - have they always been looking at me???"

- when you swipe your debit card too soon, and you do it while the cashier is turned away doing other things, so they don't realize you've already tried to swipe (too soon) so you're standing there waiting for the computer to process and they're standing there waiting for you to swipe, but neither of you realize the other isn't waiting for the same thing , but you still feel this kind of tension, and also the cashier is very cute and that makes everything somehow worse.

- the idea of death - it's so final! but then the idea of eternity - it's so claustrophobic! there's no way out! - so then the respite of the idea of death - but....it's so final! - sooo the respite of the idea of eternity - but there's no way out! and back and forth and back and forth (going to sleep for me every night grades 2-5)

Kierkegaard's recourse to faith on the other hand, "invites us to rediscover once and for all God and the self in a common resurrection. Kierkegaard and Peguy are the culmination of Kant, they realise Kantianism by entrusting to faith the task of overcoming the speculative death of God and healing the wound in the self

I've always wondered about this. Because it's not quite clear what Kierkegaard meant by God.

(He did a lot with God. A lot of it was leveraging God qua absolute against his fellow protestants. There was def this kind of radical-fuck-you-with-the-twist-of-I'm-playing-your-game-more-faithfully-than-you-ever-could thing going on. So that's part of it. For me that's the real significance of his analysis of Abraham and Isaac. But ----)

Couldn't this be recast as passive versus active thing? While both doing similar things, Nietzsche would be active and Kierkegaard would be passive. Granted, this would get a little complicated because Kierkegaard would be adovocating the active assumption of one's passive role in relation in god. And Nietzsche would be advocating the passive acceptance of that which one has to then actively affirm.

At the limit, they kind of bleed into each other (and you then think of Heidegger's whole active/passive solicitation of being, where it's not quite one or the other)

Peguy is interesting, though. And I only know him through Deleuze. But: the celebration repeats that which it celebrates - while the event itself only exists to generate its future celebrations. This seems somehow closer to Deleuze's own analysis, only I can't quite put my finger on it.* What's your take on the peguy/celebration thing?

*He invokes this same Peguyian analysis, in the ABC interview, in order to explain alcoholism. I find this fascinating and I think he's right. The first drink anticipates the drinks to come - and each drink to come looks nostalgically back to a blissful early intoxication. It's not just alcohol - this is a perfect model of all addiction. I'm getting a little rhapsodic, but it's too perfect.

You also have to respect the shift from epistemology to ontology. So if we are talking about ontic strength semiosis - as biosemiosis and pansemiosis do - then the map is actually in a relation that is adaptively making the world. It is not just a description (to be interpreted by a transcendent mind) but the act of interpretance itself by which a world is achieving crisp and stable existence.

Yes, not only do I appreciate how your view leads to this shift, but that's precisely what I'm trying to hone in on. Like Von Neumann's measuring tools, the model is both map and territory. But it's kind of this unstable thing, right? like it's both - but it can't be both at the same time. That's the first parable: As a being in time, you can only choose one or the other - you can't have it both ways. And if you try to, you lose yourself in recursion.

But, so in the von neumannian scenario cited by Pattee, we're dealing with the circumscription of a local region (that recursive explosion - where one would need a new tool, M', to measure M+S, and so forth - requires an indefinite expanse which would allow one to keep 'zooming-out'. The regions keep getting larger but, for all that, always remain finite, bounded areas. You have this infinite spatiotemporal matrix which always allows for a larger field)

The theory of everything, on the other hand, deals with universal principles. It's not trying to measure a contingent, ontic* state. It's trying to provide a rulebook. The rulebook of all rulebooks.

But, if we're good immanentists, then any TOE is simultaneously an attempt to provide a rulebook and a (dynamic, unfolding) example of those rules in action. As you've said.

So when you say this:

You will first note of course that Pattee is saying the map is an atemporal truth. It is the rate independent information or model used to constrain the rate dependent dynamics, ie: the world of material possibility.

well, yes, that which constrains has to be atemporal, but it's a weird kind of atemporality isn't it? It's out of time, yet of time - precipitated from temporal dynamic material processes (tho always implicit within them), yet able to turn around, as it were, and regulate them. (The poetic image is a sort of golem, whose mud frame (look closely!) is continuous with the mud ground, as he stands regulating or explaining the actions of smaller, simpler golems)

But a model qua TOE isn't merely constraining and controlling a local set of dynamic processes - it envelops everything - both the dynamic processes and the atemporal. It is somehow outside of the dialectic, touching the absolute**, and invites the very idea of the transcendent mind you rightfully decry. It's a fixed thing - a holy trinity of sorts - which explains the fixity/nonfixity/relation-between-the-two which characterizes everything.




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* side-note, but I don't think I understand your usage of 'ontic.' I think we may have different understandings of the term. I think you may understand by 'ontic' what I understand by 'ontological.' But I may be wrong. How would you define 'ontic'?

**If there's an ancient feud I see playing out in new terms it's not Wordsworth versus Newton but Kierkegaard versus Hegel

Your characterisation of my position is accurate enough here. But I don't see the problem.

Surely a model by definition is going to be an atemporal truth? The map is not the territory, and all that....

I guess this is my sticking point - maybe I'm not thinking about it the right way - but if we're talking about a theory of everything (or something that aspires to approach, even if asympototically, such a theory) then the map/territory distinction gets a little weird. If the territory the map covers is everything, then the map has to include itself - the map become a part of the territory. That's what makes me a little wary of all theories of everything, this kind of recursive implosion. But, again, I'm open to the idea that I'm thinking about this the wrong way - I'm just not sure how else to think about it.

Edit: So I did a google search and found and read Pattee's (quite-followable!) "The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut." His summary of Van Neumann captures a similar idea nicely: "The most convincing general argument for this irreducible complementarity of dynamical laws and measurement function comes again from von Neumann (1955, p. 352). He calls the system being measured, S, and the measuring device, M, that must provide the initial conditions for the dynamic laws of S. Since the non-integrable constraint, M, is also a physical system obeying the same laws as S, we may try a unified description by considering the combined physical system (S + M). But then we will need a new measuring device, M', to provide the initial conditions for the larger system (S + M). This leads to an infinite regress; but the main point is that even though any constraint like a measuring device, M, can in principle be described by more detailed universal laws, the fact is that if you choose to do so you will lose the function of M as a measuring device. This demonstrates that laws cannot describe the pragmatic function of measurement even if they can correctly and completely describe the detailed dynamics of the measuring constraints.'

Thanks, that was exactly the type of answer I was hoping for, gonna digest.

It wasn't about you being stubborn and close-minded and unable to paint with all the colors of the wind. It wasn't nature/machine but stasis/dynamism. Your model appears to paint the world as an unfurling dialectical play of flux and stasis which relation is intimately tied to potential/constraint (is that right?) But the model, however, can be reached once and forever. A model is something constructed, but once constructed it appears to be provide atemporal truths.

The other thing is you seem to get something out of reasserting its principles - in distilled terms -over and over again, in all sorts of diverse threads. It doesn't seem to be primarily for the benefit oreducation of others when you do it. Not most of the time anway. It's usually more eristic. What makes philosophy enjoyable and worthwhile, for me, is the uncertainty and periodic aha moments - but so having found the right answers, why still do it? You talk a lot about othering - and seem drawn to the act of othering other, less sophisticated otherings. As though - this is the insinuation - your model feeds on its difference from false models. and has to keep feeding.

Where I'm going is trying to understand how your model and its modellers (qua modellers) operate in the world it models.

buuut apo, I still don't understand where i levied an 18th century romantic stance othering you as 'mechanistic.' You keep insisting that's what I'm doing -in fact you accuse basically anyone who disagrees or has questions of this - but, though I understand this spat, I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm invoking it. One of us does indeed seem to be quite concerned with this 'spat' and to imagine it everywhere - but I don't think it's me. Is this because i quoted a poem? It feels like you're pasting a cardboard version of william blake over me, and then arguing with him - it's bizarre.

As to 'crisp', I'd never thought of it as being inversely related to 'vague' but now its mathematical pedigree is clear to me and, yes, I'm quite embarassed.

edit: ok did the googling - it's a set theory thing, right? why didn't you say that! What I'm still not clear on is how any of many of your usages of the term can be anything but metaphorical ? What I'm saying is your distinction between 'crisp,' mathematical' terms and bad vague metaphors has some merit, but when you use it against others it often becomes something of a bastardized version of itself - clearly, terms are crisp or vague based onthe context of their usage, not as a function of whether they're derived from a mathematical field (as 'dialectic' for instance, is not.)

But the simple systems science answer - which bases itself directly on Aristotelean naturalism - looks at it in terms of the four causes.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

No, I mean I understand the broad difference between mechanic and organic (teleology) and I think anyone who's spent much time on this board has been beaten half to death with the whole immanent vs transcendent thing. I - we - get the difference (the implications are another matter.) So, but no, that's not what I was I confused about.

What I didn't understand was your suggestion that my asking after the ontological status of your model meant that I was still thinking in mechanistic terms. I still don't. I'm hoping you could shine a little light there?

And I'm still curious what your theory of truth is. Or if you even care about that kind of thing? and, if not, why not?

I'm not talking about maths as maths. I'm talking about the particular maths I would employ - such as symmetry breaking, statistical mechanics, hierarchy theory, quantum mechanics, non-linear dynamics.

So there are certain mathematical/logical structures that I would appeal to here, not maths in some general sense as a practice.

And remember my response to the OP was that SX ought to use crisp formal mathematical concepts in place of his vague terminology. I said he should think in terms of reciprocal relations - as in dichotomies - rather than his "selection". Or hierarchical relations rather than his "hinges".

So if you want examples of what a more mathematically rigorous approach looks like, that was already it.

The biggest problem I have with this explanation is that it's not really true - you constantly use 'crisp' and 'rigorous' and 'mathematical' to refer to non-mathematical neat dichotomies, as with that true detective analysis way back when. I'm sure I'd struggle a whole bunch with pattee and whomever, so I understand the need to simplify. What waries me is the way you play fast and loose with a whole bunch of terms, as though you suspect your audience won't know the difference. The way you talk about math and science - Idk, man, it's not the way other people who know hard stuff well talk about it to the uninitiated. At least in my experience. There's something a little coquettish to your style lol jk I love you apo, but there is.

Anyway, I wasn't referring to your initial response to the OP, because you never mentioned math in it. But if that really was what you were doing in that post - suggesting mathematical substitutes drawn from irl scientific fields - your inclusion of 'dialectic' alongside 'reciprocal relations' etc. is odd. 'dialectic' is certainly not a 'crisp formal mathematical concept.' So are you using 'mathematical' to mean something which extends beyond actual, like, you know, math? Or are there 'crisp' concepts which aren't mathematical, and 'dialectic' is one of them?

There's this thing you have with 'crisp' - which is very interesting. I mean it's interesting that the word you use most, and seem to find immense satisfaction in, is not itself any more 'crisp, formal, mathematical' than 'selection' or 'hinge.'

Do you find that interesting? What do you think about it? It seems interesting right!

Also, I simply don't like Deleuze's use of the phrase itself. I get what he's trying to do with it - it's basically an incredibly clever rejoinder to Plato - but it's unnecessarily confusing and leads to objections exactly like the one you've formulated.

Yeah, same, it confused me at first and now it just bugs me. It's pretty clear that, for Nietzsche, the eternal return is a thought experiment which serves as an ethical heuristic. It's not an ontological thesis at all. Maybe you could make the claim that Nietzsche's work as a whole supports this ontological idea that Deleuze has dubbed 'eternal return' (I have no idea, I haven't read much Nietzsche since high school) but either way, it's still a bad term to employ.

'selection' is anything but voluntary in Delezue, and selection is always the result of an 'encounter' with or 'interference of' a 'question-problem complex' which forces one to creatively engage and fabulate responses as a result (the quoted phrases are Deleuze's)

If I understand Deleuze correctly ( I'm talking chapter II of DR here) time itself is a kind of traumatic aftershock, the effect of a disrupted equilibrium.To be in time is to be called upon to act, to set things right (that whole hamlet/time-out-of-joint analysis. (which, imo, is a a kind of rehabilitation/surpassing of Heidegger's call/conscience analysis in division 2 of B&T) ) You could say, maybe, that to exist as dasein - to be in time - is to be forced to select, and that what we'll select is already largely determined by the trauma that produced the time we exist in (as?) Our freedom, then, wouldn't concern what we select (do I choose x or y? vanilla or chocolate? the left door or the right?) but would be the spiritual process of navigating to the place/moment where we have (1) the courage to 'throw the dice' and (2) the moral fortitude (and practical capacity) to affirm what lands. Selection would be simultaneously voluntary and forced.

That may sound wishy-washy, but I don't think it is.

@apokrisis could you also maybe shine some light on what you mean by 'mathematical' and 'rigorous'? Generally, when you use these words on the board, you appear to be referring to clear, distinct terms - 'crisply' differentiated opposites. But it's easy to create crisply differentiated things - with that usage Henry James or even Tom Clancy could be considered 'rigorous' and 'mathematical.' Over on the old pf you called one of my analyses of True Detective mathematical when it quite obviously wasn't (tho ty it was flattering) Are you just dumbing it down for those of us who can't do math? and, if so, why are you doing that? It's a little patronizing.

(some background - one of my longtime friends is dating a guy going for a phd in math - we discuss his work sometimes and he displays the patience and graciousness of a specialist talking to a layman. He's good with metaphors. But he wouldn't pretend that a crisp distinction between x and y is 'mathematical' because he respects his interlocutors well enough not to pretend that stark differentiation *is* math. I assume, based on your assurance, that you have similar mathematical facility (right?) so i wonder what accounts for the difference in approach?)

I don't see you - or your sources - as enemies so I don't feel compromised by playing on your field, by your rules. As to the worldview I'm confidently building upon worm-eaten and ancient foundations - well, honestly, I'm not too confident about anything philosophically - my confidence is limited to a few relatively small regions, none of which are philosophical.

I don't understand the significance of your mechanic/organic distinction here. Is it a rhetorical thing of I cited poetry and 'if you want to play that game, well, guess what, *you're* actually the mechanical one and what do you think of that?'

Or are you saying that trying to find flaws in someone else's model is to be 'mechanistic' (??)

Either way, I'm not trying to poke holes in the model itself - I'm trying to understand how, as a part of nature, it relates to nature as a whole (a triadic metaphysical nature, if you want, not a spatiotemporal matrix with arbitrary laws and a starter pack of matter/stuff.) The model itself certainly couldn't exist in that symmetrical purely potential apeiron-thing/space/whatever. Yet, using the model, we can talk truthfully about it. There are, apparently, truths about the apeiron even before truths can be spoken. So maybe that's what this all boils down to. What's your theory of truth?

(footnote: what's up with the discrete/continuous bit? there are two opposites which function as limits and things operate somewhere in between? That's a solid example of the fruit of science and speculation? It sounds like a readers digest version of Bergson lol jk i love you apo but it does sound like that)

Alternatively, this is what all the possibilities distill down to. If you understood the natural sciences in their broad sweep, this is where we are at.

Why 'alternatively'? I don't understand the natural sciences in their broad sweep, but I'm open to the idea that you may. Whatever leads to the model, the model itself is remarkably stable, quite satisfyingly fixed. What I'm interested in is your understanding of the status of this model in relation to all the other fragile, tenuous structures out there. Is the model itself of their kind? But how could something as fragile as they consistently and truly explain such a diverse range of phenomena? It's as though the tenuous, ephemeral, doomed dissipative structures were able to construct something quite-fixed.

Let's get romantic and non-crisp and quote yeats:

"Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."

whatta dream right

But is your model that kind of non-natural enamel bird? or is it of a piece with nature?

@apokrisis *stands up nervously and accepts the mike from the emcee* I haven't read peirce or prigogine and i don't know much about biosemiotics, symmetry-breaking or thermodynamics -but the fuzzy, none-too-crisp vibe I'm capable of extracting from your posts is something like: what there is are these hierarchical and crystalline structures preciptated from formless potential (through the intervention of some sort of clinamen?), structures the equilibrium of which is ever-threatened, and inevitably disturbed, forcing them to reform, until eventually they don't and everything finally dissipates. Probably all wrong, but anyway it's striking that your own model is clenched and curled up super tight brooking only those findings and ideas which will reinforce (or add subtle shading to or furnish new examples of) a set and sedentary framework. *stutters into the mike, adjusts collar* could you, um, comment on that?

"Laying claim is not one phenomenon among others, but the nature of every phenomenon." p.62

I guess, if you wanna go whole-hog immanentist, that the metaphysician's act of selection must itself be ontologically explicable. & so this is how you avoid the perspicuous concern that @Moliere raises about metaphysics bleeding into epistemology - you make being itself a process of 'laying claim' or 'selecting', so that the metaphysican's act is but one instance of a universal process.

The thing with chapter 1 of Difference & Repetition, though, is that, in it, the concept of selection isn't just a matter of metaphysical methodology. It makes the more radical move - and correct me if you disagree - of making selection ontological, of painting being itself as a kind of continuous process of selection. ( very much along the lines of Heraclitus' "War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free" & tied, I think, to Deleuze's ?-being) A preening aphorist might say, borrowing your usage, that Deleuze, as a metaphysician, has selected selection for his ontology.

Out of sincere, non-rhetorical curiosity, is your current reading of D&R especially colored by any particularly secondary source or interpretation?

But I am often led back to the thought that we cannot have any certainty at all other than the sense of absolute certainty; and this does seem to be very strongly correlated with mystical 'knowledge' (as well as our knowledge of things in our everyday experience).

Butting in here, but I'm in total agreement with this point - what I've experienced in my few 'mystical' moments had a certainty that is, literally, ineffable. Maybe clarity is the better word? All i know is they put my 'non-mystical' life into relief as a kind of excrescence, valid in-and-of-itself, but somehow derivative and blurred, like a game you started playing, and then forget you were playing, until the limits of the game began to seem like ultimate limits, beyond which nothing.

There's a line in Gravity's Rainbow, toward the end, which captures it so well:

"When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. your skin aches. At last: something real.....moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is apple-colored. the knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has be left behind now, so quickly."

I like the idea of sedimentation, but I'd like to understand it better.

Not far into Time Consciousness but it feels like retention is less a razor's edge than a sense that one's current experience is a continuation of an earlier experience, part of the same movement (though not in a narrative way - in fact narrating the movement from what's been retained to where you are now would probably be a surefire sign that those moments are no longer retained.)

So the question then, if we choose to forgive him the cherrypicking, the tenuous links and the exaggeration, is: does the story add up? Is it a good description of the last forty years to say that as finance took power and the world became impossibly complex, politicians and media gave up on their visions and missions and created a fake world, which, though we are sceptical and cynical about it, we accept as the new normal? It has a lot going for it, I think. On the other hand, if his choice of facts doesn't amount to evidence in support of this thesis, the film hasn't done its job except as a kind of propaganda or polemic.

It is a good vision - though I think there might actually be something to Barry Etheridge's wild claim that there's nothing here that hadn't already been said in Augustine's City of God. On the level of content, it's very silly. But the form seems ancient--- Isn't this Plato's cave? The sophists and the poets feeding us a false reality? I suspect you could find voices saying the same thing at nearly any moment of history. I wonder when the world was really real and people really lived in it? F Scott Fitzgerald had Gatsby's library of uncut books in 1925. Flaubert was convinced a bankrupt culture had tragically falsified life itself back in 1856, when he wrote Madame Bovary. Don Quixote, in 1605, had the same theme. Another way of looking at things: The world is realest to us when we're young. Curtis is 61 - 40 years ago, right as the world was beginning to wax false, he was 21.

I agree, btw, that retention for Husserl doesn't extend into the distant past, but I think it kinda does in a deep psychological ot even spiritual way. Maybe along the lines of the ethical time you mention.

I think I'm gonna dig into the time-consciousness book a bit - I think Husserl's own account goes against rentention being strictly perceptual, in the same way Derrida argues, but I've only read secondary sources and a few sections.

So yes, I agree with what you've said, and these cases are interesting snd complicate any account of time --but Husserl uses music and past notes to illustrate what he means by retention and so to understand him we must look at what its like to listen to a piece of music and how the past notes work on the present ones-and I think past notes clearly operate in the way I've outlined.

It seems important, though, that in these examples, you are already familiar with the piece. Again the as if is interesting here.