In attempting to observe and theorise about our situated observing and theorising it is all too easy to fall into the way of treating the process as a solution to a problem of information processing, and in this way pushing what is irreducibly individual and personal into the background. In other words, nothing is easier than to ignore what doesn't fit into a promising line of inquiry. The self, even as the centrally motivating instance, is what has arisen in time and what is expected to dissolve in time, it is peripheral to the significance generated by the achieved computations. Is it a principle mistaken for a principal, or the other way around, or both at the same time? In order for there to be a problem of world construction there must be a principal on whose behalf it is to arise, or else there are only a plurality of such problems arising out of Darwinian principles which are each conveniently but not entirely coherently resumed under a virtual principal. It might be said that a certain historical thinker's self was merely the disposable motivating vehicle that allowed what was original and valuable in his or her thoughts to be uttered. It doesn't feel that way though, even here where there are no particularly original or indispensable thoughts. The striving to know falls short of what the self requires but the requirements of the self in taking on life still are paramount. The self is perishable and imperfectly realised and yet its uniqueness provides the sole justification for its existence. One feels that there must be a reconciliation between this ontological singleness and its knowing which transcends singleness. The notion of a personal God acknowledges the depth of this desire without proving that it can be resolved.