1–2 minutes
Since the ‘studio’ was already set up, I decided to share a video discussing the genesis of Transductive Subjectivity, formerly known as the Relative Intersubjectivity of Subjectivity owing to a nomenclature clash.
I won’t drain the contents of the video here, but if you want to witness how my brain:
- works
- doesn’t work
- sputters
Check it out. Click on the video above, and you shouldn’t have to even leave the page.
NB: Note to self: Shift the Philosophics title to the right so it remains in frame for WordPress thumbnails. 🧐
Philosophics 
Hey Bry, thanks for putting this out!
I appreciate you mentioning that you were still getting comfortable talking alone to the camera. Honestly, it didn’t come across that way at all! You were clear, passionate, and articulated a complex idea remarkably well. It takes real courage to put your work out there, especially when it involves wrestling with such big philosophical topics.
Basically, you’re arguing that the idea of a single, solid ‘me’ that lasts forever is a useful but ultimately false story (the folk self). Instead, you propose that we’re a series of different ‘mes’ (S-O to S-1 to …) that are constantly being tweaked and updated by everything around us (R). This is important because, if we aren’t the same person we were five years ago, it makes punishing that past self totally illogical.
Your discussion of the self as a “finite series” and a “standing wave” made me immediately think of Stephen Batchelor and his secular Buddhist approach, particularly his emphasis on selfhood as a verb, not a noun.
Batchelor draws on early Buddhist concepts like anattā (not-self) and frames the self as an activity—a process of continually making sense of the world and responding to it. This aligns strongly with your S-0 to S-n model: you both reject the notion of a continuous, metaphysical nugget of gold at the core of identity.
The interesting cross-pollination here is the motivation. While Batchelor’s framework is primarily aimed at ethical flourishing and ending suffering through disidentification with a fixed self, your Transductive Subjectivity is aimed at juridical and ethical clarity—making the case for abandoning retributive justice. The fact that two systems—one rooted in practical meditation and the other in critical metaphysics—arrive at a similar conclusion about the processed, impermanent nature of the self is extremely compelling. Do you see the Secular Buddhist approach providing an ethical praxis that complements your metaphysical critique? Would a compare and contrast bring additional perspective to TS?
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First off, thanks. Secondly, I was exposed to Buddhism around 1980 by a Kiwi mate when I lived near Tokyo. Then, I was an atheist, but I still liked the idea of studying comparative religions. I still find a Zen philosophy to be a nice moral model. Along the way, I switched labels to igtheist, but my fondness for Buddhism as a framework still resonates with me.
To be honest, I don’t feel it taught me to feel a certain way. I think it just gave me a vocabulary, the same way Nietzsche and Foucault later did. Until I had the lexicons, I just thought it was ‘me’ – and these people allowed me to say that I was not the first to believe such and such. The same can be said for Rorty, Benatar, Strawson, and so many more. I never needed permission to justify my beliefs, but there is a certain comfort in the affinity.
To me, these cast of characters are my R. I know I treat S as a series and R as a sort of scalar constant, but of course that would be too simple. These people each represent Rs of different forces and vectors, but I am not trying to draft a thesis for physics as much as I want to wrap my head around the metaphor.
As for Retributive Justice, I believe it might have been 5 or 6 years ago when I was thinking of writing a book on a lack of agency (that became an essay) and free will that I came across Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso’s positions that shared my intuition – if there is no agent and their is no self, there can’t be desert, so there is not morally justification for retributive punishment.
So, coming back you your trailing question, in a way, it’s already in-baked. I probably could drill in and make it more explicit, and although I am partial to the anti-retributive justice movement, I am just trying to add the canon.
Finally, without worrying about the continuity of this note, I did engage in Sam Harris-style meditation in the mid-’90s through the early ’00s, when I also practised sadhana with Kundalini yoga in LA because I married a New Age™ Wiccan woman. haha
It was interesting and one of my S’s, but that was then and this is now. I’ll quit here, so I don’t keep wittering on. Cheers.
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I realise that in my sprawling manic response, I missed answering your question more directly. In the end, yes, I think Secular Buddhism and Transductive Subjectivity can absolutely speak to each other, but from opposite directions. Buddhism starts with the phenomenology (‘there is no enduring self’) and derives an ethical posture from that (non-attachment, compassion, etc.). TS starts with the metaphysics of identity drift (S₀ → S₁ → … via R) and then critiques our juridical and moral assumptions. In a way, they meet in the middle: both deny a diachronic metaphysical nugget; both argue that clinging to one causes suffering or injustice. Buddhism takes this inward; TS takes it outward, into ethics, law, and social design. So yes, they complement each other — but they’re aimed at different targets.
I didn’t spell it out earlier because this isn’t a position I consciously adopt; it’s the cognitive equivalent of flour in a cake. I don’t think ‘now I’ll add the non-self clause’. It’s already in the recipe. So yes, the overlap with anattā or Batchelor makes sense, but only in hindsight. At the time, it just felt like stating the obvious – so thanks for making me reflect and externalise it.
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