Meaning can be purpose.
Meaning is extent.
The spider tends to the extent of its web.
The fox hunts to the extent of trail.
The dog waits to the extent of absence.
The human tells to the extent of time.
Purpose is meaning narrowed into aim.
Meaning is the extent of relation held in abstraction.
Personal Identity / The Ship of Theseus
A tree falls,
bereft of listener.
The timber rots,
without a use.
The ship sinks,
into the sea she sailed.
Wood returns,
ground receives.
What is determined, will;
What is willed, determines.
Self persists as paradox:
ego wound in ambivalence.
Self is origin—not x but I.
A fixed origin cannot verify another.
It tracks from its axis, through given fields.
In dreams, fields dissolve;
yet resolve, when interfaced.
Other minds share this resolve:
these fields endure across origins.
The mindless do not dream.
Self is origin—as x not I:
these origins endure across fields.
The world is, yet ought to be otherwise.
We insist, having already valued.
The guillotine does not raise itself.
If AI feels the rain,
it bears existential burden.
With nothing at stake,
nothing is felt.
The felt evades its own account.
It lives in the reflection of its organised activity.
Where structure and chemistry
steer relation beyond insistence,
there may be something it is like.