**Links to**: [[Reference]], [[Esto es un verso]], [[THIS LIE IS A SENTENCE]], [[Double consciousness]], [[Paradox]], [[Lying]], [[Mathematics]], [[Recursivity]], [[Gödel]], [[Self-evidence]], [[Self-model]], [[Self]], [[Selfæta]], [[Self-deception]], [[Self-refuting idea]], [[Self-interest]]. ### [[Postulate]]: Equivalence and difference are sometimes (_often_) more useful principles than truth and falsity. This is a sentence right here. Followed by a second one. Why sentences need punctuation?^[See: [[Breath as logic]].] Breath was the first proto-logic gate. There seems to be a difference between rehearsing a sentence through inner speech (“the universe is infinite”), and feeling that thought at a “deeper” level (e.g., perhaps very personal, but: the vertigo that can be experienced from the thought “the universe is infinite”). The second type of experience, I speculate, has to do with the thought leading to a kind of basal generative model adjustment (learning, openness to complexity: more entropy), whereas the first is a low-entropy state (exploiting, simplifying, less entropy: maintaining the stability of a perspective, the capacity to self-reference, an identity or self-relationship). The reason the apparent disjunction in experience between having a thought and feeling a thought exists, to put it in very crass terms, could be because, otherwise, a planning entity would not have the capacity to plan. Experiencing no distinction between self and non-self means loss of coherence, identity. We are able to metacognize, because of a very basic ability to self-reference, an identity operation. In primary consciousness states (for example in psychedelic, psychotic experiences or REM sleep) we often (temporarily) lose this capacity (e.g., ego loss, transcendence). Referents represent possibilities. All words (a linguistic type of referent) are ambiguous and require context for disambiguation, because they otherwise remain inconclusive, i.e. impossible/virtual/impotent. Conversations are contexts in which possibilities become reduced (i.e. disambiguated) into dynamically emerging shared goals. Conversations can span minutes, years, generations, etc. Referents are many: gestures, words, objects, etc. Architecture is a conversation we’ve been having for ages, for example. What happens when abstract entities gain traction on something _beyond_ reference? E.g., in systems that build formal logics which *entail* (where there is a foreseeable degree of socially-agreed upon predetermination: e.g., in the effects/functions of logical operators). What is self-reference a possibility for? I think that self-reference is the basic characteristic required for what we tend to call “perspective”. The possibility of a self, where the ability to metacognize^[Or metaformalize, as in computation: where we build a coarse-grained schema of entailment/bifurcation/etc. in order to reveal something about the structure of reality.] emerges from, too, is presented to itself as a possibility. Maintaining this possibilistic conversation with oneself is fundamental to experiencing a sense of continuity (memory, gravitational agency center, etc.). See also: [[04 Concepts as pre-dictions]]. ### Footnotes %% [[Self-reference notes]]