No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
—Heraclitus
. . .
My primary motivation here is to use science and philosophy as means to argue for a loose ontology that extricates us from the binds of an immutable conception of self and a constricting social reality. Our representations of the world and ourselves are just that—representations; indeed, quite malleable representations. And recognizing this fact grants us radical interpretive agency and freedom to direct our lives authentically and forge intimate connections in an otherwise meaningless universe. . .
As we have seen, my freedom, in order to fulfill itself, requires that it emerge into an open future: it is other men who open the future to me, it is they who, setting up the world of tomorrow, define my future; but if, instead of allowing me to participate in this constructive movement, they oblige me to consume my transcendence in vain, if they keep me below the levels which they have conquered and in the basis of which new conquests will be achieved, then they are cutting me off from the future, they are changing me into a thing.
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
. . .
Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume warned us to be cautious of deriving an ought from an is in order to avoid making—in the punchy words of neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland—stupid inferences from the state of the world. . .