Jude / Thaddeus.

In a twistedly esoteric manner, this is related to this. No, really, I mean that.

I was talking anecdotal analogies with someone I know. The philosophical kind, of course, because what else would I do, right? I don't watch What Not To Wear and I don't watch LOST, so other things have to be made up instead.

We were thinking of a person who, since birth, has no self-consciousness; that is, their mind never registers the sensations its physical body receives. The person's mind does think and, presumably, the body senses, but it never connects with the mind's functions. What would such a person and their thoughts be like? Perhaps a very certain blank and unquestioning understanding. It would seem that a person's imagination is only made up of things, or combinations of things, that they have already experienced. And if this is the case, then a (solely) mental image can not exist. One might think, well, but of course you are using your imagination to think of this person--but that is just it. We were cobbling together the negatives of our experience.

What does that tell us but, among other things, that perhaps it is our tendency to think of things outside of our own experiences, and sometimes even to desire them. And only through the edges of experience. Knowing them as impossibility.* With us, yes, but with this person there would be no desirous hopefulness, no expressive language, no ethics, no revolutions.