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Sunday, 15 July 2018



The imaginary inner space in which you are localised is the space of all accessible states, all the alternate states in which you might find yourself. The internal distances between such states depends on how vividly you can represent them and on how viable you judge the path from your present state to an alternate one to be. This means that you have a way of representing alternative-states-in-which-you-might-be, which could perhaps be thought of as counterfactuality: if conditions were otherwise this is how I would find myself. In addition there is a realism function which tells you whether the transition to a given state is possible and what the cost of such a transition is likely to be - cost being dependent on the sequence of transitional states. This is an imaginary space, but what it is filled with is representations of the self. Self really only exists as what makes sense of the idea of alternative or counterfactual states. It is thus a kind of logically required objectivity, an algebraisation of being. The subject as object is the algebraic marker which makes it possible to imagine your-'self' in a different state. The more you refrain from such logical objectivation the more perfectly you coincide with your present state, the more the very concept of things being different simply dissolves into unthinkability. It may be that the practical intellect functions by generating alternative scenarios, but there is no need to divide your subjective treasure among them.

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