2. So - when Jones says of Brown: `This is the same man who called in here last month - notwithstanding that he was then wearing a beard and walking on crutches', he is implying that what for him (Jones) are the important Brown-characteristics are all still intact - and, of course, that being or not being bearded and being or not being on crutches are not part of what makes Brown Brown for Jones. They could, however, be part of what makes Brown Brown for Jenkins [Here think back to the discussion (in Paper 3 - 6. d.) of `knowing by acquaintance' - all that can count as knowing somebody is knowing some set of true assertions about him.] If, for Jenkins, Brown essentially is a bearded man on crutches, then, for Jenkins, this cannot be Brown.

a. This may seem rather odd but let's consider a situation in which somebody might assert `He is not the same man as...' and somebody might say `But of course he is!' when they are not disagreeing about the presented facts.

`I'm afraid my husband, George, just is not the same man as he was since he spent a year in gaol'. Now -

i) Plainly this is paradoxical (because of the use of `he') but this is mere language flexibility; we can phrase it as `The man (called George) who was released from gaol is not the man (also called George) who was sent to gaol - they are not both instances of that-George-ness'.

ii) We tend to assume that such utterances are always merely metaphorical (it is like as if he were a different man) - but they are not. For the lady in the case, the case for saying `This is not (an instance of) George' may be much stronger than the case for saying `This is (an instance of) George'. It is not suggested that if that lady goes off and marries Harry she will not be arrested for bigamy - but the law (fortunately perhaps - though really inevitably) does not operate by logical analysis. The law assumes that this must be George and indeed, her only grounds for conceding that it `really is' George may well be some such assumption that it must be. But, as you will see (if you have not seen already) there can be no must about it.

b. In identifying this person, we are, ipso facto, identifying a person. If X is not a person then X cannot be this person. Note that there is an obvious continuity (physical object) between a person and a corpse - but there comes a point at which it would be ludicrous to treat that corpse as that person. What, for each of us, counts as a person must reflect both the boundaries and the criteria for what counts for each of us as any particular person. Remember that this-person-ness (Fred-Jones-ness or Joe-Brown-ness) is simply a sub-class of person-ness in the same way as tall-person-ness is except that what makes a person (an instance of) tallness is understood and stated whereas what makes a person an instance of Joe-Brownness is tacitly understood but not stated.

It has been said that a person is `the class of his appearances' - so that each manifestation of that combination of appearances is an instance of that person. Thus students could say that, at each lecture, they experience a different instance of that lecturer. But, if one of those students sees it otherwise, who is to gainsay him? If the lecturer one day adopts a totally different style - and it is the style of delivery that is what is important to that student about that lecturer - then, for that student, this is a different lecturer from the one he heard the previous week (X is not the same as Y in respect of Z; the Z itself is different).

c. Patently, it is always possible that, for some people, by their criteria, Jones today is a different person from Jones yesterday (or even one second ago) - though life could be very confusing if we did make our identifications of our fellow men and even ourselves, in this way. It is interesting here, however, to consider the sense in which people might be said at times to `communicate with themselves'. The point was made strongly (in Paper 5) that communication is necessarily interpersonal. Against this, it is often asked: What about the case where somebody makes a diary note to tell himself at a future date to go to the dentist? Well, the assumption is that, by that date, he will have forgotten (or why bother with the diary?) So that, insofar as this is communication, it is between somebody who is aware of the dental appointment and somebody who isn't aware of it. Now, within this context that awareness or lack of it is a crucial distinction - the very characteristic which makes these not instances of that-man- ness. This needs careful pondering - but, when you do ponder it, you should realise that to assert that people can (in this way) `communicate with themselves' is to assert that, by certain (quite permissible) criteria, each of us can be (for himself - however Pickwickian that sounds) different people on different days.

d. The plea, as ever, is that people take seriously the inevitable conclusions of serious argument; we are not attempting to `prove' strange things `just to be clever'. And the argument that must be taken wholly seriously is:

i) If X is an apple and X is green - then X is a green apple - and similarly

ii) If X is a man and X is different - then X is a different man.

People might say `But of course we all know the difference between being a different man and just being a man who is different in some way' - but we don't unless we proclaim some kind of `real objective identity' (whether anybody recognises it or not) for persons, then there can be no basis for establishing such a difference in any permanent way.

Since the difference in question is probably just a hair-cut or being a few minutes older, there is a danger of treating this as `a philosophical joke' - a mere juggling with words - like, for instance:

That dog there is an offspring; that dog is yours; so that dog is your offspring.

But it is not like this. The concept of offspring is such that the `shift' is immediately apparent. But the concept of differentness just is not-the-same-ness, other-than-ness. To say that X is different is always to say that X is different from Y. As we have seen (Paper 7, 5.) X must be different from Y in some respects, but cannot be different from Y in every respect. It is always, therefore, a matter for decision (the identifier's decision) whether the differences are seen as to X or of X - whether this is (seen as) the same person changed in some way or as a different person with some features in common with the former person. Again think of the `reduction to a point-instant'; this-here- now is necessarily unique - can only be just as it is (i.e. was - we have already lost the now!) but - there is no continuous entity to identify - and, by definition, nothing to identify (it) with.

3. It is clear then that, in any identification- whether of pens or of persons, certain differences must be disregarded for the identification to be made. We do not in fact say: He is a man; he is different; so he is a different man. But we must allow - so he could (as reasonably as not) be seen as a different man.

And whether or not he is so seen, can depend only on the viewpoint, the classifications, of the identifier. [Here it is interesting to compare being true. It was stressed (Paper 3 - 4. d)) that it is total nonsense to speak of X being true for Jones but not for Brown. With the concept of identity the reverse applies; It is intelligible to speak of X being that X, i.e. of this (complex) being (as a complex) another instance of that (brush, uniform, person or whatever), only for Jones or for Brown].

a. Think of a pair of young adult identical twins who really `cannot be told apart' and who decide to have the best of both (married and bachelor) worlds by taking one spouse without ever letting on to that spouse that there are two of them. [To avoid irrelevancies about the marriage ceremony, we shall make it a de facto arrangement]. They are successful (who knows - it might even have been done!) and, for the whole of that spouse's life there is for the spouse just one (that) person where, for the twins (and for us, the in-the-know observers) there are two persons. Now compare this with the earlier example of the woman whose husband has been released from gaol and is so changed (and the `so' doesn't mean `very'; it means `in such ways') that for her this is a different person, though for him it is still the same person.

All that one can consistantly say in either case is that one identifier is adopting different criteria (though not different `methods') for making identifications from those adopted by most people. Though it is also important to note that the spouse of the twins has been tricked and probably would say `Good heavens, I'm married to two different people' if all the relevant facts were made known - whereas the released man's wife is aware of the same facts as everybody else but is quite unswayed by them.

b. In examining identity in general, we considered the misunderstanding that can arise from the assertion that this is the same uniform as that. And we saw that the problem arose from the different concepts people attach to the term `uniform' (the two categorially different concepts of uniformness). In the case of the same person this is not the problem; there are no grounds for doubting that all of us mean something `effectively equivalent' when we utter `person'. But it is - it has to be - a pretty rough and ready effective equivalence because the fact is that each of us has a very loose concept of person-ness indeed. We might say that it is an extreme case of `any M of N' classification.

The problems about identifying people, over and above those about identifying brushes or dreams or even uniforms, arise from the fact that people are thinkers and doers. We have, therefore, a much wider and more discrepant set of possible identifying characteristics. Being a person involves (at least) -

i) A certain continuity of presented appearances (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc) of a given kind.

ii) A certain continuity of talents and capacities. We might say this is identifying by functions. Much as a sign is a sign only by virtue of signifying something to somebody, so a mathematician is a mathematician only by virtue of doing mathematics and a swimmer is a swimmer only by virtue of swimming. But what people can be expected to be able to do is a very important part of their being people.

iii) A certain continuity of `personality' [here the word itself is significant] -the moods and attitudes and values displayed in behaviour.

iv) A certain continuity of (dispositional) awareness of a given (`personal') history - a coherent, continuous memory.

v) A continuity of space/time-track of a body.

Now, if these are the characteristics which make X a person, then it follows that this particular instance of each of them is what makes X this particular person (this subclass of person-ness).

Think about it. We might well have cause to question - Is this that same person? - if

i) the presented appearance were so radically changed that the changes could not be accepted as `natural developments' -

ii) the expected talents simply are not there - this fellow who shuts his eyes and swings wildly at a golf ball cannot be Tiger Woods, however like him he might appear -

iii) tastes and manners are just totally different from those we had learned to predict. Note that this is the `back from gaol' case - `My husband was a kind man - this morose bully is not that man'.

iv) there is insufficient awareness of that person's history - this man just doesn't know the things he would know if he were that man -

v) there is a break in bodily space/time-track - this can't be Jones here in Sydney because I saw Jones five minutes ago on a live telecast from Perth.

i) No one of them is essential - any M of the N might suffice.

ii) Each is logically independent of all the others - it is quite conceivable that any one of these criteria may be met whilst any other is not met.

c. Here consider the likely priorities for identification within different relationships - for

i) an employer, what makes Jones Jones is his capacity to do a certain job.

ii) a portrait painter, what makes Jones Jones is his presented visual appearance (those looks) - or for a concert audience his presented auditory appearance (that voice).

iii) a spouse, what makes Jones Jones is his personality, his attitude to and treatment of the family.

iv) a court of law, what makes Jones Jones is the space/time-track of that body. Here think of identity parades - what are they attempting to identify?

This last case is particularly instructive. In so-called identity trials (like the famous Tichborne case) the court is trying to determine whether a claimant `is who he says he is'. For the court, what is at issue is whether or not there is a continuous space/time track between the human body now in the witness box and the human body (some years ago) generally acknowledged to be that man. But how the court attempts to ascertain this is by questions about the compatibility of presented appearances (tatoos, scars and such), talents and capacities (whether he can do the things he `ought to' be able to do), personality (whether he behaves like that man) and memory (how well he is aware of that man's own past). The assumption is that if he comes up on all of these, this `proves' that there is the required space/time-track continuity.

In effect, these characteristics are all being treated as symptoms of that customary complex (that man) of which the space/time-track is also a symptom - and, thereby, as signs of that space/time-track.

d. Generally this procedure works well enough - indeed life could be very difficult if it did not. But we are here concerned with what counts as, not simply with what happens to be so. And, as pointed out, there is no necessity for these different criteria to be either all met or all unmet. When we are concerned with what counts as, it is usually profitable to move from familiar situations (where it is too easy to confuse what nearly always is so with what must be so) to fantasy situations - quite thinkable (possible) but not usually experienced - and pose `What would we say if...?' questions.

i) Think about Jekyll and Hyde. Here there is a continuity of body-space/time-track, but a discontinuity of practically everything else. There just cannot be any `better or worse' reasons for saying `Two instances of the one man' or `Instances of two different men'. Here it is interesting to compare the original story with the various film versions and consider the things that might make us want to say `one man' or `two men' in each of them - How much did the appearance change? How rapid was the transformation? Was Jekyll aware of Hyde and Hyde aware of Jekyll?

ii) Look at the Prince and the Frog. It is interesting that children rarely question that the frog `really was' the prince all the time - simply because that is the way the story is told.

iii) Now think about a `time-traveller'; most people should remember Dr Who. This gentleman repeatedly played larry-dooley with space/time-track - but none of the television viewers ever question that this continued to be Dr Who - because he looked right and sounded right and behaved right and remembered what he should remember...........

Space/time-track is, indeed, not nearly as straight foward as it might seem even at the `this human body' level. We don't deny it between a baby (which is very small) and an adult (which is much larger and a different shape) - so, plainly, it does not demand the constant occupancy of an exact volume of space, only of a point in space always included in the occupied volume in a contiguous way through a continuity of time. Now, since a sperm and an ovum are occupants of physical space, a part of one body which becomes part of another, then it follows that, by a simplistic space/time-track-of-physical-object criterion, we would have exactly the same problem in determining what is one human body as we have in determining what is one cloud when the clouds above us are constantly breaking and reforming.

iv) Consider also the notion of re-incarnation. Most assertions about this are pretty confused but, insofar as we are dealing with any intelligible idea, it involves some kind of direct memory awareness by somebody of a life-history other than his own. But here the `his own' can only be `his own (present) body's'. By one criterion, then, to assert that X is the reincarnation of Y is to assert that this person has a mysterious `direct contact' with that (past) person; by another (just as good) criterion it is to assert that one person has, at different times, `inhabited two different bodies'. Take your pick!

e. Once it is clearly understood why there can be no ultimate rule about personal identity, we see that it is not, in fact, necessary to go to fantasy situations to make the point. People can have such sudden and drastic changes in their physical condition (their appearances) that it becomes a serious question - to what extent (in what ways) they can properly be regarded as still the same person. Consider: `I understand that your father has been in hospital for three years' - `No, my father died three years ago in a very bad accident; that vegetable in the hospital is not my father'. And people do have such complete personality changes [again think of the word `personality'] that these are more naturally regarded as changes of the person than to the person. The most obvious problems arise through total amnesia (very popular with sentimental novelists). If Jones now has no recollection whatsoever of Jones then, how can he possibly identify with Jones then; forhim this is just a person he has heard about but never met. and, indeed, advances in medical science (or is it biological science?) are already challenging even the legal conventions about who is who. We can agree that, in a heart-transplant case, the `identity' goes with the receiver, not the donor - but what would be the decision about a brain- transplant. And if large-scale cloning of people ever occurs, will the individual clones be different persons or different instances of that one person?

f. The `amnesia case' draws attention to an often-overlooked point, that Jones's criteria for what counts as Jones are generally different criteria from those for what counts as Brown. Each of us sees himself or herself as the experiencer and rememberer of a particular personal history. We therefore assume (in a symptom/complex way) similar capacities in other people. But, where this breaks down (in other people) - that chap has completely lost his memory - we do not hesitate to accept it as a change to (or in) that one (other) person.

4. This leads us quite naturally back to the major problem that was defered - how can there be Identification without a (particular, permanent) identifier? Surely the identifier must have an identity, as it were, in his own right.

a. We have seen that, for ourselves, we are our remembered histories or, perhaps more properly, the compilers of our remembered histories; we identify ourselves as the identifiers of everything else, as `centres of experience'. And we assume, by analogy, that other people are other (similar) `centres of experience'. Now, this does imply that experiences are `real parts of the real world' (or that experiencings - in this case identifyings of situations - are actual events) but it does not imply that we are `reintroducing through the backdoor' any `permanent or objective' identities.

[Here it is worth noting that the famous Cartesian dictum - I think therefore I am - fails to establish what it purports to establish because all that is legitimately implied is that, since there is thought, there is thinker. The `attachment to' that thinker of the assumed connotation of `I' is quite illicit.] If I identify X (myself) solely as the identifier of Y (any identification whatever) this gives me no grounds (other than the usual, purely subjective ones) for attributing any additional (on-going) characteristics to X.

b. Let us, for analogy, allow that (by definition) a bus is a carrier of passengers. This allowed, then any carriage of passengers for any period implies the existence of a bus for that period. There is no implication that anything continue to be a bus; the motor-vehicle involved may never have been a bus before and never be a bus again.

In a wholly parallel way, since we allow that an identification (and thereby an `identity') demands an identifier then, insofar as X identifies Y as an instance of Z-ness, by the same process X `is identified' as an instance of centre-of-experience-ness for the duration of the process of identifying Y as an instance of Z-ness. But again compare the bus - there is no implication that that `centre of experience' functions as such (i.e. exists as such) at any other time. We are using a purely functional classification criterion. Thus, to be regarding a centre of experience as (by definition) pro-tem an individual person (or other animal) is not to attribute permanent, `independent' identities to persons.

[It is well worth noting why the quotation marks were placed round `is identified' in the paragraph above. To the extent that we do identify ourselves it is as a series of instances of this thinker (this identifier). But being conscious is not necessarily being self-conscious; it is highly probable that many lower animals are never self-conscious (have no concept of personal identity at all) yet they do identify instances of kinds - they have to in order to survive.

5. We are now talking of experience - and it would be wise to examine that concept carefully since the term is used all too often somewhat loosely. When an advertiser seeks `an experienced wages clerk' he is demanding a level of competence in that area (knowing how to). This is OK since (as we saw in Paper 3), people can know how to... .only by having had certain experiences. But when people say things like `He has experienced several major operations' (when he was, presumably, under anaesthetic) or `The plan has already experienced a number of setbacks' there is plainly some confusion between doing and being done to. So, let us allow that, at the very least, experience of X is current awareness of X. `I am aware that my appendix was removed - but I did not experience its removal; I was unconscious'. Experience is consciousness.

a. It follows, therefore, that experience is somebody's experience of some state of affairs, somebody's awareness that some state of affairs pertains. So, when people say - e.g. `The experience of the Cambodian people has made them suspicious of saviours', they must be referring to an aggregate of experiences of Cambodian persons - which are seen as being experiences of the one state of affairs.

[Here think back to communication - Paper 5 - Jones cannot have Brown's concept - or Brown's experience - but what their experience is of is the state of affairs accessible to both of them].

b. Thus, for there to be experience, there must be an experiencer and that which is experienced - and here we meet a distinction which will be of considerable importance to us in all that follows - between -

i) the experience per-se - that which is happening to (or in) the experiencer, the `actual content and structure' of (somebody's) thought or awareness - and

ii) the situation experienced - what the experiencer sees the experience as of, in objective reality terms (and assumes that other people also see it as). Here it is instructive to consider a question (really a psuedo-question) frequently asked by bright children: What if your red were my green - how would we know? It is seen on reflection that there is no answer because nothing could count as this situation. Thought is necessarily private and the thought-about is necessarily public. Provided any individual's experience (per-se) is consistent, he will, from that experience, make consistent judgements about the world experienced - that is to say, judgements consistent with the judgements of all other people who have consistent experience. We cannot make the judgements without the experience, but all we can ever compare, when we `compare our experience with that of other people', is the judgements made (what the experience is seen by us as of).

c. So - to say that two people are having the same experience can only be to say that they are responding equivalently to the same (the one) state of affairs.

People sometimes talk as though we perceive our perceptions (a bit like buying our purchases); our perceptions are our awareness of what we perceive. What we perceive is (assumed to be) states of affairs in the public world. Here think of a blind man and a deaf man [we'll meet these two fellows quite a few times!] standing on the station platform and perceiving that the train is coming alongside. What each of them perceives is just that train (or more properly, that the train is coming) - though how they perceive this (their respective experiences per-se) are plainly very different.

d. There is a sense, then, in which the experience per-se is the mode of perception (of the experienced). As we progress further we shall see that there is also an important sense in which it must be thought of as a `stage of perception' but for the present, let us be quite clear that all that can count for Jones, at the conceptual level, as a particular state of affairs pertaining is Jones's interpretation (in objective reality terms) of Jones's current experience per-se. Jones assumes that (in objective reality terms) that experience will be effectively equivalent with the experience of Brown or anyone else who is `experiencing the same situation' and , in the overwhelming majority of cases he is right so to assume.

It might, therefore, be said that each of us `provides', through his or her own experience per-se, the content of the common world which we all experience. But...

6. At this stage, we should look at the concept of phenomena (phenomenal-ness). Very broadly, the phenomenal is that which presents to us - as it presents. So it would be fair to say that Jones's phenomenal world is Jones's interpreted experience, his view of reality in his mode of experiencing it.

a) Since Jones's experience per-se is essentially and exclusively Jones's and Brown's is exclusively Brown's there is a sense in which Jones's phenomenal world and Brown's phenomenal world could be (qualitatively) quite different (the `your red, my green' point) though neither could ever know this. But the discourse between them about the world they live in is possible only because, whatever the modes of perception, what each perceives is effectively equivalent with what the other perceives. So Jones's experience per-se and Brown's experience per-se must correlate - or neither of them could ever move from `my world' to `the world`and could not, therefore communicate with each other.
Quite naturally, we do not see the essential correlation of experiences as a terribly happy accident which creates the world. Rather we assume that the world, the objective reality, is what makes these experiences correlate. It should be seen, then that to assume that every `centre of experience' is a centre of effectively equivalent experience (a basis for communication) is to postulate an objective reality prior to and independent of all experience [Here refer back to Fact - Paper 6, 2.].

b When we assert, then, that X is phenomenal (or merely
phenomenal) what we are distinguishing X from - what we are
saying it is not - is that objective reality which we postulate.

Here it should be profitable to consider the `sausage-machine model'. The very crudeness of the analogue is itself a warning against drawing too close an analogy but, approached with caution, it can be useful. An ordinary kitchen sausage-machine is so constructed that, if appropriate ingredients are fed into one end and the handle is turned (or the power switched on) sausages come out of the other end. The sausages will be as they are as a result of two factors - what goes into the machine and what the machine does to it. We might say that the content of the sausages depends on what goes in (pork, beef, bread, beans or whatever) and the structure of the sausages (long and thin, short and fat, straight or curly) depends on the machine. The in-put cannot determine the structure and the machine cannot determine the content - but if either is changed then we get a different sausage. Now try to think of the centre of experience (the person) as the machine and the objective reality as what is fed in. What `comes out' (the sausage equivalent) is the phenomenal world. It is as it is partly as a result of what went in and partly as a result of how it was processed - and if either were different, it would be different.

On some such `model' as this, people have traditionally spoken of `data' (the given) and an interpretation of that `data' to produce our familiar external worlds. Such descriptions should, however, be approached very carefully. The concept of data proves very slippery when we try to grasp it - largely because the sausage-machine analogy blurs a very important difference between the two situations.

c. When we use an actual sausage-machine, we have no difficulty identifying the meat, bread and whatever that are fed in - prior to the feeding; we are independently aware of both elements, the ingredients and the process, as well as of the product, the finished sausage. But, in the case of ourselves as `sausage-machines', all we can ever be aware of is the finished product - the phenomenal world. Since the machine itself (myself or yourself) is part of that phenomenal world, this can be investigated (in phenomenal terms) - but the ingredients (the objective reality `fed in') can only be postulated; they cannot be examined in non-phenomenal terms. [Here think back to Paper 3 - 8. a). The problem is parallel with, and plainly related to, the impossibility of comparing what is so with what is believed].

Because of this it is terribly difficult to avoid confusion in our own thinking about `objective reality'. We are in fact dealing with two conceptually distinct things -

i) the coherent phenomenal world about which we make all our judgements and against which we check our judgements and those of other people - the only world we canbe familiar with - and

ii) the postulated `causal-to-phenomenal' reality which we are forced to postulate as the governer of the effective equivalence between our own and everybody else's phenomenal worlds - we might say `the co-ordinator of the phenomenal world' though, as we shall see, this would tend to introduce an unnecessary `middle-man' between my phenomenal world and the objective reality. [This point will be examined at a later stage].

Each of us can think about the objective reality only as it is presented in (or by) his or her phenomenal world. Yet, to deny the distinction between the phenomenal and the objective (to assert that the phenomenal is the objective reality) is to reduce trueness to mere coherence of beliefs and, thereby, destroy the only possible criterion for knowing. [Think about this very carefully].

In trying to `home in on' that data, we are not helped by the tendency to refer to it as sense-data. This makes us think of it in sensory terms, in terms of colours, sounds, odours, etc. - and these are very plainly `machine-originated'. The `centre of experience' is, amongst other things, the senser. The `sensory quality' of the phenomena must depend, therefore, on the sensing capacities of the centre of experience (the `machine') in question. Congenitally blind people cannot `produce' a coloured world and congenitally deaf people cannot `produce' a noisy one.

Here think about a red and yellow beach ball which children (as they will) bury in the sand and lose. While it is down there under a foot of sand there is a case for saying it is still a ball (still spherical) but what case can there be for saying it is still red and yellow? When people do assert this they can mean only that, if and when it is dug up and returned to the light, it will present as red and yellow (not green and blue). And there is an assumption here that something about the state of affairs (the existing objective reality) will make it present to people (who can see) as what each of them thinks of as red and yellow.

The trouble with the notion of sense-data, once we realise that the `machine' is the `sense-stuff-maker', is that: if X is given to the machine, X cannot (as itself) be sensory; if X is created by the machine, X cannot be data. Thus we can be talking only about what our senses do with the data - about some aspect of the phenomena produced.

e. Look at the sausage-machine model again but, this time, think of the machine as being up against a wall with the ingredients fed in from an adjoining room which we can never enter. From the sausages produced we can learn something about the ingredients but we can never experience them as ingredients only `in their sausage component forms'. For us, then, those ingredients just are the postulated `given' known to us (and classified by us) in their `received' or `processed' form.

Now, with the (real) sausage-machine, we are aware that the `content' of the sausages derives from the `given' and the `structure' of them derives from the machine-process. But, with our`machines', this situation is reversed; since the content, the sense-stuff (the colour, sound, odour, etc.) originates in the `machine' it must be the `structure' which is given.

The interdependence of structure and content within the phenomenal is crucial to any comprehension of the perceptual process and must be clearly understood. There can be no content without something structured for it to be the content of - and there cannot be a structure without something (some content) to have that structure.

To take the simplest example: you cannot have a colour manifested without a visual shape and you cannot have a visual shape without the manifestation of colour-differentiations.

i) Think about a childrens toy in which a picture emerges when paint is splashed onto the paper. It does not matter what colour paint is used, it is that pattern (that structure) which emerges.

ii) Now, with this analogy, think of our `produced sense stuff' as displaying the structure which is `given'.

iii) In each case the `structure revealed' was, in an important way, already there to be revealed; it was not created by the process, merely displayed by it. The structure, as such, is therefore indifferent to the mode of its manifestation. [Here compare the parallel relationship between statements and sentences].

iv) Now think again about the `my red, your green' (non) problem. What we regard as the common world we talk to each other about just is the complexity of structures `revealed to us' in our various sensory modes.

f. We must be very careful, however, that we do not `wish phenomenal forms' on the `causal-to-phenomenal' objective reality. To think of any structure is to think of it as manifested in some phenomenal form. And what we are trying to grapple with here is the (unthinkaboutable?) `bare structure' which just is what it is irrespective of its phenomenal manifestation. There is a sense, therefore, in which what we are postulating as objective reality, since it cannot be a manifested structure, can only be a manifestible structure - or the structurer of all manifested structures.

So our task now is to consider very carefully the extent to which, and the ways in which, the structures of our phenomenal worlds reflect the nature of the objective reality we converse about and assume ourselves to be appraised of. Since, plainly, we could not be so appraised if we did not sense, we shall next consider the `performance' we call sensing.