Wittgenstein's no private language argument and Aristotle's third man argument against the Platonic theory of Forms both rely on the fact that for two disparate elements to be in a pre-given relation to each other, identity in the one case, participation in the other, requires a further witnessing or act of the same kind to bring about, or validate, the relation itself. In the first case there is no-one else around to accomplish this, to confirm the sameness of the two instances, and in the second if it were achieved it would lead to an infinite regress. In ordinary intersubjective reality the relations of disparate matters are stabilised by convention, and so are necessarily contingent and never lose a penumbra of doubt, which the expression of a 'reality effect'. This is a luxury that is not afforded in inner experience or in the presumed metaphysical reality - the very cases where a reality effect cuts no ice. For example, when in dreams you recurrently find yourself in the same place, the convention that underwrites that sameness is dreamed too, and indeed you are usually not alone in these dream locations. Despite this there is an ineffable unity in inner experience which somehow short circuits the need for confirmation - it is as if it comes about outside of time, out of a concrete atemporal and original identity. This is a strong source for the idea of the self, although it is not itself an idea or any sort of apperception.