SRH is everywhere - just details a classic example

The common belief is that "I think."

But that is a thought.

By Godel/SRH something cannot talk about itself without incompleteness. Once incomplete it is no longer talking about itself in a discrete and total way.

So the thought "I think" cannot be about itself.

In the realm of "thoughts" the thought "a thought" for example belongs to that realm it is not about that realm.

To access the realm of thoughts we need to go beyond thoughts. The "substance" of thoughts is not thought. You cannot make a thought out of thought: that is not what "making" is. The "Thoughts"--with a capital--names all thoughts, but the thought "thoughts" belongs to that realm and is different: they cannot be the same else we get Godel/SRH.

In Essentialism you make a tiger out of Tiger. This is wrong. Tiger is not "a tiger". Tiger is a thought. Likewise you can't make thought out of Thought.

So returning to the top we think "I" and then we promote it to be the thinker of "I." This is wrong.

When ever we think "I" we know for sure by SRH that we are not the thinker.

This is a complex situation because we have a picture of a complex situation. Let;s ignore this is just a picture and "think" about it as though it was what it depicts. A person looking in the mirror. So simple question. Where is the person? Well obviously the flesh and bone person who set this whole thing up is holding the mirror.

So who is looking at us? Obviously it is the flesh and bone person looking at us. But they are looking at us via a mirror which bounces the light. Thus to look at the flesh and bone person we look in the mirror, and get the light being bounced from the face of the flesh and bone real person. Our brain however projects this image in a straight line and so it looks like the person is straight ahead and that create this image. It appears there are two people. We "know" that the real person is holding the mirror, but there is a phantom face looking at us from inside the mirror. Well it doesn't really trick us does it, we know what is going on.

That is until we look at our self in a mirror. Then if we think about it we can wonder if that phantom person is really our self.

Now this demonstrates the difference between being a thought and being a real person. Obviously the person who walks up to the mirror and sets the whole illusion up is the real person. They are actually looking at the whole scene and even doing the thinking. The phantom person in the mirror is just an illusion. They are not really looking back!!

However once we start thinking we set up references. The person in the mirror is no one else. If I raise my hand, it raises its hand. It is clearly me and no one else. That is true. But "me" here is a thought. I am saying "no one else" so I am seeing the identity here in terms of "other people" and deducing that it must be me. This is the "I think" person, the thought person, the person who inhabits not just mirrors but thoughts and plans. This is the image of myself in the brain. This is the homunculus who causes all the problems that religions say Satan exploits. Following this ghost leads us away from our true self. That true self is looking at the whole scene, being aware of it and thinking all these thoughts.

This is SRH. You cannot be the person you think, because you are the thinker. And what might be lost in this statement, that means the thinker is not the person you think! We cannot think about ourselves, the image, and then promote that to be the person seeing the image. They are completely different orders of reality.

So how do you think about the thinker? You can't! The only way to think about the thinker is to think! When you have a thought, that is your true self having a thought!

Descartes is right in a way. "I think therefore I am" is true. There must be a thinker. But the problem is that thinker is not the "I." By SRH it can't be the "I" for that would be having the "I" being supported by the I. How do you know you exist? Well I can corroborate it myself. Really? That is like the defendant in court being the judge. No the "I think therefore I am" (called the cognito) in a thought itself! And so on ad infinitum. It can never be a thought that escapes thought: that would be a contradiction: an word that escapes being a word? The "I AM" that Descartes is describing is really existence itself, the present Moment and the greater self that transcends the world of discrete thoughts. The "I AM" that Descartes is describing is the thinker of thoughts, which makes it not a thought, and not even an "I." In the same way that the reflection is nothing like looking at the reflection, so the true "I AM" is nothing like the thought.