What to write, what to write...

Take your left hand. No not yet. First go to somewhere where there is a mirror. No not yet. First finish reading this. Otherwise it won't be much of an experience.

Now take your left hand and put it up to the mirror. Notice that there is a hand that you can see in the mirror. It appears identical to your left hand in every feature.

There's dirt under your pointer finger from an hour ago when you checked to see if the plant needed watering. And there's dirt under the pointer finger of the hand in the mirror.

The nail of your thumb is torn off from where you chewed it too far when you were anxious about that meeting at work. The same as the thumb in the mirror.

In every feature, the hand in the mirror is identical to the one on your arm.

Now pay close attention because this is a little subtle.

Try to describe how the hand in the mirror is different then the one on your arm. Because it is different. Obviously. If you could take that hand out of the mirror and place it over the hand in your arm it wouldn't work. It would be the opposite.

But try to describe that difference. Did you see what you had to do? To describe the difference you had to reference something else. Left. Right. North. The towel rack. The other hand. You can't describe the difference between the hand on your arm and the one on the mirror without referencing something else.

When each hand is described in and of itself, as an entity distinct and independent of all else, they are identical.

Described in the world, the world in which we all live and breathe, they are different.

Don't ever think that its all not connected. That's what makes it beautiful.

And that's my favorite thing about Kant.

- posted by Sigurd4/22/2004 07:21:00 PM