The belief that ‘what’ the concept of the brain signifies (the object called “brain”) contains the concept of the brain that signifies itself, is logically circular and empty of meaning. We (conscious selves) conceive of the concept of the brain but this does not imply that its meaning is ‘in’ the brain. Concepts are not just information, but meaningful information. A computer can store complete design information about itself, but this does not make the computer meaningful to itself, let alone conscious. The ‘meaning’ of information is something extra that the information does not contain but must be ascribed from somewhere else.

The following is a provisional blurb for my forthcoming book, which will possibly be titled ‘Moral Ontology: a thesis on the interdependence of Sense, Integrity and Agency’. The draft is narratively dense, theoretically tight and logically complete for my liking, so now pitching to publishers.

“Performative contradictions are uncontroversially self-defeating, but some situations may involve contradictory terms that are too complex for the agent to identify as contradictions. For example, does stealing or lying for personal gain entail a contradiction? Does it therefore ultimately lead to failure? Is intentional killing in self-defence a performative contradiction, acting against a deeper, more fundamental self-interest? These questions intentionally suggest a link between logic and ethics/morality, and render ethics and morality 'realist' in the sense that wrong actions may have inescapable negative consequences for the agent. A further consideration is whether the negative moral consequences of action are tolerable for the sake of other valuable ends. For example, is gaining wealth through deception a good enough compensation for a conceptually remote metaphysical cost? Is national security maintained by intentionally killing the enemy combatants a good enough compensation for the associated metaphysical cost (if any)? Are we rationally justified in killing an innocent person to preserve the lives of many people (the trolley problem)? Does the majority have the right to kill an innocent minority to achieve a higher standard of public health? Does the end justify the means? If the end justifies the means then what justifies the end? In addition to formulating an analytical framework for rationally solving complex moral dilemmas, I argue that the structure of sense, internalised as the logical consistency of Self-ideation with respect to the world as we know it, determines not only the moral integrity of our conduct but the ontological integrity of Self, and that objective morality is not an impediment to agency but its optimal realisation, the essence of creative power over meaning, which is the ultimate self-interest.”

One cannot be an ‘authentic’ communist unless one is a member of the proletariat, a blue collar worker, someone who generates material value that is susceptible to exploitation by the non-productive bourgeois. All academics, professionals, specialists are the bourgeois, the class exploiters of the proletariat, including those who identify as communists in order to facilitate this exploitation. The internal contradiction of communism is of course that it cannot be implemented without the administrative/managerial/commissar elite, which is still just the bourgeois.

It is a folly to assume that doctors, activists or politicians who show sympathy or express agreement with your concerns have Your best interest at heart instead of Theirs. It is also a folly to assume that their idea of self interest is aligned with yours.

Governments: ‘we need more soldiers to kill one another and any non-combatants standing in the way’ in patriotically motivated defence of their local branches of our global banking cartel.

The majority of people are functionally antisocial, insofar as they are unwilling or incapable of constructing consistent arguments to support their claims. Sociality is coextensive with meaning, with the capacity to cooperate to make common sense. The majority is content with asserting their convictions and do not care how those convictions could be derived from common premises. They are concerned only with finding prejudiced support for their own prejudices.

There are two ways of interpreting an arrow in the bullseye of a target: 1) someone accomplished a perfect shot into the target, 2) someone painted the target around the arrow. The fact that the universe is improbably ‘just right’ for the emergence of consciousness assumes (1), but we can alternatively interpret the outcome as (2), as the evidence that the universe was intentionally ‘fitted’ to consciousness, which implies that the universe emerged from or with consciousness, not independently of it. Only this second interpretation avoids the circular logic of positing ‘the world as we know it’ (meaningful only in the mind, a concept) as something that exists independently of the mind, but still as that concept.

A potentially harmful medical intervention is justifiable when someone is sick (only insofar as it remedies the harm of the illness), but not when someone is healthy.

In political systems that are functionally deficient (communism/socialism), political corruption is the means of supplementing the system and making it work on the existential level. It is the inescapable shadow of the system. In political systems that are functionally sufficient (capitalism/democracy), human corruption is integrated into the system itself, normalised, legitimised.

A system that guarantees only that people ought to be treated ‘equally’ is not therefore ethical, just or right. It is possible to treat everyone equally wrongly, unjustly and unethically. In order to be right the system must treat everyone equally right.