It has been a good few weeks in the mountain air. In retrospect, I wasn't good for much in the first fortnight, but I kept reading, and held to the discipline, and apparently the innards mended. Things are starting to fall into place, and the focus is beginning to return to the mind. Two times up the hill in the morning last week, had been hoping for three, but an unexpected late night made rest more advisable. Hope to be back to the usual five-day cardio within a fortnight.
I remain more convinced than ever that dispassion is the necessary discipline. We must be the same in fortune and misfortune, principally because we don't know what they really are.
The work of thought requires a life; we're not just creating mental and textual patterns, but these exist as extensional forms of the entirety of the life. The point of a thought is that a soul is having it. Those worried about some ontological singularity with the advent of these artificial electric brains are a bit like those who resisted cultivating animals and crops rather than hunting and gathering. Yes, they're breathing and thinking just like us, but the point of our breathing and thinking is that we're the ones doing it.
So, I appear to have survived, but appearances can be true -- or at any rate be associated with the thing itself. That's one of the bits that the post-Kantians missed. The appearance is of the thing itself. We should think about what we do (bring ourselves as characters into the world of appearances) only enough to make sure we're doing the right thing. Onward.