A Conversation Between Sigismundo Celine And Sigismundo Celine

I am Sigismundo Celine, not the man in the moon.

But then he was the man in the moon. Earth was a distant light in the sky far, far away. Various famous Lunatics were gathered around explaining moon-logic to him. “You never get ‘outside’. What you call ‘outside’ is another part of ‘inside’. See?”

“Yes,” he said. “I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them. Even in sexual intercourse I did not, strictly speaking, experience the other: I experienced my experience of her.”

“Then the whole universe is inside my head?”

“But your head is inside the universe. How do you explain that?”

“Well, then, I must have two heads, so to speak. The universe is inside my actually experienced head, but that head and the universe itself must both be inside my head logically necessary conceptual head. Is that it?”

“Yes. My conceptual head contains the universe, or a model of the universe to be strictly precise, and inside the that model is the model of my conceptual head, which is of course also my experienced head.”

“Careful now. You’re building up to an infinite regress.”

“I can see that, but it must be because consciousness itself is an infinite regress. I think that explains coincidences.”

“Are you quite sure you know what you are saying?”

“Yes. A coincidence is an isomorphism between the contents of my conceptual head, outside the universe, and my experienced head, inside the universe.”

“And why would there be such an isomorphism?”

“Because, damn it, my two heads are really only one head. I’ve just separated them for logical analysis.”

“But how can your conceptual head, outside the universe, be your experienced head, inside the universe?”

“Because, because . . .”

“Yes?”

“Because concepts are experiences, too. My conceptual head is experienced, and becomes my experienced head, whenever I think about mathematics or pure logic. Yes, by God. When I see a spotted dog, that is inside my experienced head, as Hume demonstrated. But when I think about the actual dog that creates the image in my experienced head, I must be expanding my conceptual head to include the actual dog, not the image of the dog. So the dog, and the rest of the universe, are actually in my conceptual head, not in my experienced head, which only has their images.”

“But then my experienced head is both inside and outside my conceptual head – which means it is both inside and outside my universe.”

“You’re still in the infinite regress.”

“I can appreciate that. By the way, am I talking to you or talking to myself?”

“Is there a difference?”

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