On one side consciousness is the very touchstone of certainty not so much according to the pattern of the Cartesian cogito but in that the highest degree of certainty that might be given to any belief is underwritten by the self-certainty of the believing consciousness. Indeed the skeptic is only able to doubt everything by comparing possible beliefs with an inexplicit self-certainty - and if this extends to systematically doubting oneself it is only in reference to positional or thetic beliefs; what it is that knocks them down like nine-pins is the non-thetic self-certainty of consciousness. It follows that self-certainty is empty, which means pragmatically that the possibility that the nature, essence or reality of consciousness is entirely other than it seems cannot be ruled out. We already have enough experiences of a wholesale reframing of consciousness, of shifts in what some refer to as 'ontological qualia' that the possibility of further and yet more radical shifts is always open. That is to say that consciousness is certain of itself, but it is entirely uncertain of what it is certain of. A similar logic applies to desire - we seem to be wholly invested in our strongest desires so that they represent a transcendent truth about ourselves, but we are also aware from experience that we can be entirely mistaken about precisely what we desire - desires can be peeled back to reveal truer desires concealed within them, and so there is no reason why these 'truer' desires might not themselves be opened to yet truer forms, without end. Behind these structures of unveilings lies the intuitive recognition that there is an act taking place with a rapidity beneath notice by which we endow our ongoing experience with ideal form.