Social life requires something like a form of re-presentation, a defining of a field of operation and a symbolisation of the various agents included within its boundary, including the reflexive - something like this but on a level far upstream of the synaptic, since we can find effective optimisation strategies practised even by single celled organisms, to say nothing of what might be found in viruses. It is out of strategic purposefulness that we are endowed with a fundamental insincerity, and it is out of this that we must distill our notions, and practices (dare one say praxis!) of sincerity, cut to the shape of what we take to be our best selves. Presumably for a dog or a horse the issue doesn't arise and lovers of these animals are periodically scandalised when some blunt-speaking ethologist is reported in the news to have accused their darlings of a sophisticated form of opportunism. Dogs, however, wear their good faith with marvelous aplomb, as cats their selfishness. On the other hand it is simply part of the logic of life, and not the least cunning, that we should be for so long mistaken about the logic of life. What the mind grasps clearly and distinctly is for that very reason meant to be taken in just this way, to bar the way to what is unclear and indistinct, precisely for our own good - as long we understand the 'us' here in a suitably impersonal way. We occupy the space between the feeling and the sign of the feeling. If we couldn't write out cheques on our attentive feeling, indeed on our empathy, such as it is, even if limited pretty much to ourselves, then all our relationships would collapse. Indeed talk of cheques is asking too much, it is enough to offer payment by plastic.