One of my concerns about hidden-in-principle stuff in the self is that it leads us back into dualism. — plaque flag

But it only does that when you begin to speculate 'what could that be?' By positing it as something, then you're introducing a division or rupture. Obviously this is a very deep subject, but it came up in the MA thesis I did in 2012 on Anatta (no-self) in Buddhism. The first excerpt is from the Buddha referring to the states of jhana (meditative absorption). Then there's a Q&A between a monk and a senior monk on what this means.

The intellect is to be abandoned. Ideas are to be abandoned. Consciousness at the intellect is to be abandoned. Contact at the intellect is to be abandoned. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the intellect — experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain — that too is to be abandoned. — Pahanaya Sutta, SN 35.24

Does this say, then, that beyond the ‘six sense gates’ and the activities of thought-formations and discriminative consciousness, there is nothing, the absence of any kind of life, mind, or intelligence? Complete non-being, as many of the early European interpreters were inclined to say. This question is put to Ven Sariputta (Sariputta is the figure in the Buddhist texts most associated with higher wisdom):

Then Ven. Maha Kotthita went to Ven. Sariputta and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there, he said to Ven. Sariputta, "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?"

[Sariputta:] "Don't say that, my friend."

[Maha Kotthita:] "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media, is it the case that there is not anything else?"

[Sariputta:] "Don't say that, my friend."
….
[Sariputta:] "The statement, 'With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?' objectifies non-objectification.The statement, '... is it the case that there is not anything else ... is it the case that there both is & is not anything else ... is it the case that there neither is nor is not anything else?' objectifies non-objectification. However far the six contact-media go, that is how far objectification goes. However far objectification goes, that is how far the six contact media go. With the remainderless fading & stopping of the six contact-media, there comes to be the stopping, the allaying of objectification. — Kotthita Sutta, AN 4.174

The phrase ‘objectifies non-objectification’ (vadaṃ appapañcaṃ papañceti) is key here. As Thanissaro Bikkhu (translator) notes in his commentary, ‘the root of the classifications and perceptions of objectification is the thought, "I am the thinker." This thought forms the motivation for the questions that Ven. Maha Kotthita is presenting here.’ The very action of thinking ‘creates the thinker’, rather than vice versa. In effect, the questioner is asking, ‘is this something I can experience?’ So the question is subtly ego-centric.

The way this translates to me, is in the form of a strictly apophatic approach: knowing that you don't know. That is different to wondering what it might be, if you can see what I mean. That was the approach of a particular Korean Son (Zen) teacher, Seungsahn, who's teaching method was 'only don't know!'

Of course, it's easy to say such things (particularly for me as I'm overly loquacious) but actually realising it requires considerable dedication. That is the practical application (praxis).

As Thanissaro Bikkhu (translator) notes in his commentary, ‘the root of the classifications and perceptions of objectification is the thought, "I am the thinker." This thought forms the motivation for the questions that Ven. Maha Kotthita is presenting here.’ The very action of thinking ‘creates the thinker’, rather than vice versa. — Wayfarer

:up:
In other words ( ? ) , language speaks the subject. A convention of selfhood emerges, a very early piece of intellectual technology. This conceptual-cultural self is real enough, just not (in my view) absolute.

“the I posits itself”; more specifically, “the I posits itself as an I.” Since this activity of “self-positing” is taken to be the fundamental feature of I-hood in general, the first principle asserts that “the I posits itself as self-positing.”

The principle in question simply states that the essence of I-hood lies in the assertion of ones own self-identity, i.e., that consciousness presupposes self-consciousness (the Kantian “I think,” which must, at least in principle, be able to accompany all our representations). Such immediate self-identify, however, cannot be understood as a psychological “fact,” no matter how privileged, nor as an “action” or “accident” of some previously existing substance or being. To be sure, it is an “action” of the I, but one that is identical with the very existence of the same. In Fichte’s technical terminology, the original unity of self-consciousness is to be understood as both an action and as the product of the same: as a Tathandlung or “fact/act,” a unity that is presupposed by and contained within every fact and every act of empirical consciousness, though it never appears as such therein.
...
A fundamental corollary of Fichte’s understanding of I-hood (Ichheit) as a kind of fact/act is his denial that the I is originally any sort of “thing” or “substance.” Instead, the I is simply what it posits itself to be, and thus its “being” is, so to speak, a consequence of its self-positing, or rather, is co-terminus with the same.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/#Foun

I'd say our skill with the word 'I' is part of that thrown falling immersion or they-self that we only can even begin to investigate after the fact of our enculturation. I'm a master of use before I even begin really to theorize about that use.

Yes, but I'm wary of the German idealists. I've been reading Magnificent Rebels, by Andrea Wulff, which is about Fichte, Schelling and others in late 18th c Jena. Even though I have respect for the German idealists, they were often verbose and incredibly obscure. Fichte's writings, of which I only have very small exposure, are labyrinthine. (I seem to recall him boasting that he was so clever he doubted anyone in his orbit would be able to understand his brilliance.) There are points of convergence between German idealism and (particularly) Vedanta philosophy, that is subject to comment, but the Germans lacked the cultural milieu in which to actualise those insights, in my opinion. (This is also covered extensively in Urs Apps' 'Schopenhauer's Compass' which is the other book I'm reading on it.)

Then Ven. Maha Kotthita went to Ven. Sariputta and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there, he said to Ven. Sariputta, "With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?" — Kotthita Sutta, AN 4.174

Personally, I think those six elements are a plausible decomposition of all possible experience/reality in the abstract. So I'd answer no. Intellection includes the structure of the rest (and its own self-referential, arbitrarily complex internal structure.)

As long as you include Kant in your criticism, I hear you. I do appreciate the relative clarity of English philosophers like J. S. Mill and Hume and so on. Descartes is excellent on this point too. But that's a bit of a secondary issue. I agree with ol' Popper that the source of an idea don't matter. It stands or falls on its own. One of Heidegger's problems was his reluctance to embrace this idea of the independence of the fruit from the soil. And how can we drag in Buddhism (and so on) without the assumption that such a transplant is meaningful ? So, respectfully, I'm not tempted to reject ideas on the basis of their circumstantial embedding context. Though obviously, like anyone, I'm less likely to bother figuring out what someone is saying if the package isn't promising.

More generally on the issue of charisma, authority, and other related source issues, I invoke a mathematical metaphor. I care more about the 'theorems' than the 'mathematicians,' but as a 'mathematician' I have a secondary interest in other players of the game. Indeed, a big part of reality is this cooperative adversarial structure of the [self-positing] Conversation that comes to understand itself. Theology constructs the God it seeks in that very seeking. (?)

As long as you include Kant in your criticism, I hear you. — plaque flag

I've often said, and sorry if I'm repeating myself, that I first encountered Kant in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, a book that became very much part of my spiritual formation. Murti compares Kant with Madhyamaka (the middle-way of Nāgārjuna) and details many convergences between them. This book has since been deprecated by more current academics on the grounds that Murti (an Indian, Oxford-educated scholar) was too 'eurocentric' in his approach but one of my thesis supervisors endorsed it. As to how to incorporate Buddhism in such a way that it's meaningful, I won't pretend that is an easy question.

I might argue that point. Ya know….we cannot think a thing then think we have thought otherwise, but we can think a thing and talk about it as if we thought of it otherwise. You cannot fake your thoughts but you can fake your language regarding your thoughts. — Mww

I would have thought the "preferred" would take care of that...but perhaps not with everyone given human diversity.

Since I mention this thread in my op, I feel it is polite to mention my new thread here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14707/reading-mind-and-nature-a-necessary-unity-by-gregory-bateson

Bateson is a really original thinker, and goes some way, I think, towards resolving the difficulties being expressed here.

Oh. My fault then. Sometimes I get too analytical. Preferred implies intentionality, but there’s only one way to think, within the confines of the legislation intrinsic to the three logical laws, which eliminates a preferred way of thinking. What is thought about may or may not be a conscious choice, but we can’t choose what to think of what we end up thinking about.

I interpret Kant's idea of in-itself as signifying that we know only what appears to us, which is not to say we know nothing of consciousness-independent real things, but that the reality of those things is not exhausted by how they appear to us and other cognitive beings. — Janus

Yes! :100:

How does phenomenology explain the existence of disagreement between people? And how does it propose that disagreement be resolved?
— baker

Husserl puts the emphasis on empathetically understanding the other from within their one perspective.
/.../ — Joshs

But doing such just maintains the status quo. If one puts oneself into another's shoes, one can always understand them, always perceive them as reasonable. How does that solve anything?

So, I interpret Kant's idea of in-itself as signifying that we know only what appears to us, which is not to say we know nothing of consciousness-independent real things, but that the reality of those things is not exhausted by how they appear to us and other cognitive beings. — Janus

Who is "us"? Mankind as a whole, any particular person, or a particular person (but not some other person)?

I think many of these disagreements come down to preferred ways of talking, and underlying the apparent differences produced by different locutions there may be more agreement than there often appears to be. It is remarkable how important these metaphysical speculations seem to be to folk.

I think there is a big reason why someone says
"This is a good book"
and not
"I like this book".

In the first instance, they are making a claim about the inherent, immanent quality of a book and implying that they are qualified to see things "as they really are" (while not everyone has such qualification).

In the latter case, they are stating a personal preference without assuming objectivity.

To wit: I once said to someone that Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" was one of my favorite books. He replied, "You're wrong, because this is actually a very boring book."

From this, it's clear he took for granted that there is an objective reality, that a book has a particular immanent value, and that he knows "how things really are" while I don't. Other conversations with him supported this.


The differences in locutions are not superficial.

I wasn't questioning the laws of logic, I was referring to thinking on the basis of some preferred premise or other; so, yeah, not a case of preferring to think either consistently or inconsistently, rationally or irrationally. Not sure if that was what you had in mind, though...

Who is "us"? Mankind as a whole, any particular person, or a particular person (but not some other person)? — baker

I would have thought it should be obvious that I was referring to the way things generally appear to humans; you know, things like 'trees have leaves', 'water flows downhill,', 'clear skies are blue' and countless other well-established commonalities of appearances.

To wit: I once said to someone that Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" was one of my favorite books. He replied, "You're wrong, because this is actually a very boring book."

From this, it's clear he took for granted that there is an objective reality, that a book has a particular immanent value, and that he knows "how things really are" while I don't. Other conversations with him supported this.


The differences in locutions are not superficial. — baker

I think what you say here has no relevance to what it aims to respond to. In any case, the person who told you're wrong to like Portrait of a Lady was speaking idiotically; it's uncontroversial that there is no accounting for taste, no possibility of establishing objective aesthetic criteria. Anyway all you report saying was that you liked it and not claiming that it is a great work. That said, if canonicity is at all to be thought to be a reliable guide to quality, the book is widely regarded as a classic.

What matters (to me at least) is open discussion and cogent arguments, though, and points of agreement with historic philosophers (authorities) are worthless without cogent arguments presented in our own words and accompanied by a willingness to hear them critiqued and being prepared to sustain engagement as long as is required to either arrive at agreement or agreement to disagree. — Janus

Which is impossible when one of the participants is a moderator, putting his moderator foot down.

Not sure if that was what you had in mind, though... — Janus

Close enough. When I see “way of thinking”, I interpret “way” as “method”.

What is the 'solipsist' trying to say but 'can't' ?

The idea is that the same object may be before his eyes and mine, but that I can't stick my head into his (or my mind into his, which comes to the same) so that the real and immediate object of his vision becomes the real and immediate object of my vision, too. By “I don't know what he sees” we really mean “I don't know what he looks at”, where “what he looks at” is hidden and he can't show it to me; it is before his mind's eye. Therefore, in order to get rid of this puzzle, examine the grammatical difference between the statements “I don't know what he sees” and “I don't know what he looks at”, as they are actually used in our language.

Sometimes the most satisfying expression of our solipsism seems to be this: “When anything is seen (really seen), it is always I who see it”.

What should strike us about this expression is the phrase “always I”. Always who? – For, queer enough, I don't mean: “always L.W.”
...
What tempted me to say “it is always I who see when anything is seen”, I could also have yielded to by saying: “when ever anything is seen, it is this which is seen”, accompanying the word “this” by a gesture embracing my visual field (but not meaning by “this” the particular objects which I happen to see at the moment). One might say, “I am pointing at the visual field as such, not at anything in it”. And this only serves to bring out the senselessness of the former expression.

Let us then discard the “always” in our expression. Then I can still express my solipsism by saying, “Only what I see (or: see now) is really seen”. And here I am tempted to say: “Although by the word “I” I don't mean L.W., it will do if the others understand “I” to mean L.W. if just now I am in fact L.W.”. I could also express my claim by saying: “I am the vessel of life”; but mark, it is essential that everyone to whom I say this should be unable to understand me. It is essential that the other should not be able to understand “what I really mean”, though in practice he might do what I wish by conceding to me an exceptional position in his notation. But I wish it to be logically impossible that he should understand me, that is to say, it should be meaningless, |(Ts-309,109) not false, to say that he understands me. Thus my expression is one of the many which is used on various occasions by philosophers and supposed to convey something to the person who says it, though essentially incapable of conveying anything to anyone else. — The Blue Book

https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book

In my view, much rides on our approach to this issue. 'I' see the same object from my perspective. But 'perspective' must be generalized and metaphorical here, because I also include colorblindness and myopia. Indeed, my entire system of beliefs and training meet 'my version' of (or rather are my perspective on) the same object --- same because [our ] language always intends our object in the world.

*****
We might review why we are tempted toward a 'solipsistic' or 'idealistic' position in the first place. Our nose is always in the picture. Our body is always at the center of worldly experience. The 'camera' (the there itself) follows this hungry and fearful body around. What I believe is just how the world is, while I believe it to be that way. If I'm in true uncertainty, the world itself flickers threateningly. The limits of my language are the limits of 'my' world (the world from my perspective.) I will say, in retrospect, that certain dimensions in were invisible or unnoticed by a younger me. I didn't know then there were transfinite numbers or phenomenologists.

I'm trying to make a case for the centrality of of the issue of subjectivity. I'm not saying we we agree on the details, but we seem to agree on the importance of the issue.

What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world!

I want to report how I found the world.

What others in the world have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience of the world.

I have to judge the world, to measure things.
— The Notebooks

https://archive.org/stream/notebooks191419100witt/notebooks191419100witt_djvu.txt

I have to judge the world. The normative-responsible claim-making mask-choosing ego (not the transcendental ego) is itself already in a quasi-isolated situation, especially in more individualistic societies. I have a vivid 'direct experience' of my little corner of the world, but in a high-tech society, I take so much on trust. I am a good progressive, maybe, who 'trusts the science' --- though this may boil down to trusting a consensus I don't know how to check directly.

What others in the world have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience of the world. The world is 'given to' highly motivated creatures who mostly notice and remember what keeps their body warm and fed. Traditions of history or physics construct a picture of the world without our noses in the foreground. Hence the achievement of forgetting subjectivity, of seeing around one's little household ways and gods. Some updated version of matter moving in void is taken as the truly real.

The status of the color and meaning and culture that we somehow paint on this bottom layer is typically left obscure. Consciousness is a mere paintjob, not being itself. But this suggests our being 'trapped' in the paintjob, and that 'atoms and void' are still merely representation, a kind of instrumental fiction. True reality is forever Out There, though it must exist because we've presupposed mediation, the paintjob, indirect realism. We did this because: nerves, brains, fuctional relationships between bodies and the reports from their mouths. Because we took common sense to be real and trustworthy enough to build the rest of a weird ontology upon --- one throwing into doubt its own foundation.

The key representatives of objective idealism I can think of are Hegel and Plato. Both vary from one another, but both accept that rocks, trees, chairs, etc. are plenty real in some sense. They are "mind-independent" in terms of not being causally generated by minds and their properties are not created by the mind either.

However, both have an understanding of entities as being more or less real. Things are more real when they are more self-determining and more necessary, less contingent on things outside themselves for being. So, a rock, is far less real than the idea of a triangle because an individual rock is essentially a bundle of effects. A rock isn't self generating or rationally necessary in any sense. Thus, we get an idea of a higher level of reality where ideas, which are more self-determining and necessary exist "above" individual instances of objects.

This view rejects a mechanistic view of reality. If anything, the "view of science" as a view that uses logical principles, self-determining reason, and active self-discovery, and which progresses dialectically, is more real than what that view purports itself to "be about." Which is why for both, the type of project that science is, a "going beyond of the given," is of paramount importance, even if the metaphysical claims attached to the project are denigrated.

However far the six contact-media go, that is how far objectification goes. However far objectification goes, that is how far the six contact media go. With the remainderless fading & stopping of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] , there comes to be the stopping, the allaying of objectification.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.174.than.html

Note the media metaphor here, which is all too natural for us. The gates of the eyes, gates of the ears, for the world flow 'in.' And it does in some sense, for the subject is a kind of infinitesimal central vortex, seemingly the body 'for which' it all happens or exists. But this witness is only the verbal-bodily cultural-conventional ego, and this still-worldly ego is an object existing among others ---though crucially 'entangled' somehow with the 'site of being ' --- world-from-perspective.

The perception, "I am the thinker" lies at the root of these classifications in that it reads into the immediate present a set of distinctions — I/not-I; being/not-being; thinker/thought; identity/non-identity — that then can proliferate into mental and physical conflict. The conceit inherent in this perception thus forms a fetter on the mind. To become unbound, one must learn to examine these distinctions — which we all take for granted — to see that they are simply assumptions that are not inherent in experience,

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.14.than.html

Hume dissolved the self. Mach and Heidegger do so in their own ways. I hope it's not too eurocentric to hope for some kind of universal human insight here, which is a product of a universal-enough human logic.

I know what you mean but not specifically what you are referring to.

Close enough. When I see “way of thinking”, I interpret “way” as “method”. — Mww

So, you it seems are focusing on the method, and I'm focusing on the foundational presuppositions that support the method. The other thought that occurred to me was that not all ways of thinking are methodical.

The other thought that occurred to me was that not all ways of thinking are methodical. — Janus

:up:

Some of my best work related thinking has ocurred when I'm not thinking about the topic, and possibly even while I was sleeping. It's commonly been the case, that when I'm in the shower getting ready for work, that I've recognized a way to understand or deal with some problem - an understanding that I hadn't had before I got in the shower.

Yes, I can relate to that...I've had very similar experiences.

Hume dissolved the self. Mach and Heidegger do so in their own ways. I hope it's not too eurocentric to hope for some kind of universal human insight here, which is a product of a universal-enough human logic. — plaque flag

There have been many comparisons between Hume’s so-called ‘bundle theory of self’ and Buddhist no-self teachings. But obviously the context and intentions of Hume’s philosophy and Buddhism are worlds apart. (Although there’s an interesting, if overly long, essay in The Atlantic, about the possibility that Hume encountered Buddhist teachings in the French town of Le Clerche we he lived whilst composing The Treatise.)

With respect to the ‘six sense gates’, that is from abhidharma, Buddhist philosophical psychology. It’s a very sophisticated system and very hard condense, although it’s noteworthy that it’s often mentioned by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana in their research into embodied cognition. Its convergences with phenomenology have also been subject to a lot of comment.

Some of my best work related thinking has ocurred when I'm not thinking about the topic, and possibly even while I was sleeping. — wonderer1

An interesting book by a 60s-70s author whose name is rapidly receding in the past: ‘The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler. It traces the history of Western cosmology from ancient Mesopotamia to Isaac Newton. He suggests that discoveries in science arise through a process akin to sleepwalking. Not that they arise by chance, but rather that scientists are neither fully aware of what guides their research, nor are they fully aware of the implications of what they discover.’ It’s full of serendipitous discoveries and scientists making astonishing, accidental discoveries whilst in pursuit of something else altogether. And accounts of discoveries like you mention, where insights arise unexpectedly when going about their daily lives.

The question of solipsism has come up several times in this thread. ‘If “the world” is experience alone, then how is solipsism avoided?’

From an excellent blog post on idealism and non-duality, the following solution is given:

Influenced by the Zen experience of Enlightenment (“satori”), the Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida writes in his classic work An Inquiry into the Good: “Over time I came to realize that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience. I thus arrived at the idea that experience is more fundamental than individual differences, and in this way I was able to avoid solipsism… The individual’s experience is simply a small, distinctive sphere of limited experience within true experience. (Nishida, Kitarō (1990 [1922]), An Inquiry into the Good.)


With his statement that the Zen experience of Enlightenment enabled him to “avoid solipsism”, Nisihida indicates the insight that consciousness is not ‘locked up’ inside the individual’s head or brain: “it is not that consciousness is within the body, but that the body is within consciousness”. (Idem: 43.) If consciousness resided in the brain, it would indeed be cut off from the world outside one’s skull, which would invite the solipsistic conclusion that all I can know is the phenomenal world appearing in my subjective consciousness, but not the real, objective world outside of it. The Zen realization that consciousness is radically different, that it is rather the non-dual openness in which both individual and world appear, thus takes away the threat of solipsism. Nishida, of course, does not deny that brain activity is closely connected to individual mind activity, but for him this only means that one group of phenomena appearing in consciousness (mental processes) correlates with another such group (neural processes): “To say that phenomena of consciousness accompany stimulation to nerve centers means that one sort of phenomena of consciousness necessarily occurs together with another.” (Ibidem.) This already gives a glimpse of how Western Idealism can benefit from Eastern spirituality.

(I think this is the same point I try to make with the argument that ‘the mind’ is not simply the individual mind, your mind or mind, but the mind, which however is never an object of consciousness.)

The question of solipsism has come up several times in this thread. ‘If “the world” is experience alone, then how is solipsism avoided?’ — Wayfarer

The view I've been arguing for is this: there is no 'deep' subject in the first place but only the-world-from-a-perspective.

There are of course empirical-psychological subjects/persons, but crucially these are just entities in the world. My brain is an object in the world, but my 'consciousness' is part of the being of the world. '[First-person] consciousness' just is is. --- just exactly the world's being.

The key representatives of objective idealism I can think of are Hegel and Plato. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite right, although as often pointed out, the term ‘idealism’ was not current in Plato’s time and would not be coined until the 1700’s. But there’s another contemporary defender of absolute idealism, Sebastian Rodl, professor of philosophy at Leipzig University. From the jacket copy of Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: an Introduction to Absolute Idealism ‘ Self-Consciousness and Objectivity undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. Sebastian Rodl revives the thought--as ancient as philosophy but largely forgotten today--that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.’

It just exactly the world's being. — plaque flag

Why ‘the world’s’ being? Could you elaborate on that?

The Zen realization that consciousness is radically different, that it is rather the non-dual openness in which both individual and world appear,

:up:

I think this is the same idea. Consciousness in the radical sense (first person sense) is just nondual being.

Why ‘the world’s’ being? Could you elaborate on that? — Wayfarer

Sure. Thinking is intrinsically social, and we always use a shared language to intend objects in our shared world. [To deny this claim is a performative contradiction. ] We also discuss all of reality in the same inferential nexus. So my toothache or daydream may come up in a explanation of why I was late for work. A molecule may explain a hallucination. And so on. Our world includes toothaches , promises, prime numbers, and memories. Even this or that entity is in a little pocket of the world like someone's empirical-psychological ego. It's all in the same nexus of rationality. The truth is the whole. No finite-disconnect entity is even intelligible, for one defines or explains it only in terms of other entities. Hence Brandom's so-called 'neorationalism.' And of course Hegel's idealism defined as holism.