The self as point-observer, or the self as half-twist moebius self-reference, as 'strange loop', or as the brain's necessary fiction etc., all these sorts of notions, subjectively understood, are a version of inner coordinates, a way of locating something invisible but existing in an ideal or a logical space. If the position of a mirage is equivocal relative to one set of landmarks it is perfectly and consistently placed relative to another. These determinations of the self are all products of thought even when they only appear implicitly as part of its premises, as if thoughts were known through and through from seed to flower, as if we gave birth to thoughts and to ourselves thinking them in the same transparent act. Instead thoughts are complete presentations whose origins are necessarily quite opaque since these origins are not presented, despite the apparent coherence produced by associative trains of thought.  They are also like anamorphic images in which the main content expands to fill most of the stage and the rich context is squeezed into a narrow ribbon on the periphery. To explain the self is to assert that the necessary logical and associative operations that constitute it are active in each thought but squeezed into this crowded periphery, and are only effective in peripheral awareness. The explanatory model, represents an unfolded diagram of the process, showing in principle how this is done. All of this is to give a satisfying kind of objectivity to the self, embedding it in a tale of how things are, and even if these ideas are not teased out in deliberate reflection they are already implicit because they surround an irresolvable paradox. All such projects necessarily fail even when the entire world is enlisted in their support, but seeing directly into this necessity, refusing the satisfaction of bootstrapping into experience, is outside all doing.