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Saturday, 27 March 2021

A structure could be programmed to act as a map, or as a language, or as containing or involving a map or language. This is fine but 'acting as' is not the same as being, and at least the first utterance of that comparison implies that there really is a map or a language, with the full implication of a firstness corresponding to the operational subject. This is what the cogito ought to be, even if you can't get there by thinking about it. You might put forward the 'pre-reflective' cogito, but what exactly is that 'pre-' trying to say? It's not temporally before, as if firstness was first in time, or logic and logic were temporal. Time is a secondness at most. 'Pre-' then in another sense, which is just what happens to be in question, so it contributes nothing. But sometimes you see it see the need for it, and other times you simply don't: the opening vanishes, sealed up. This is not an accident of the mind, although you usually take it that way, but is why the very oblivion of Being is a pointer to (or of) Being.

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