All the head in a jar talk is hard to swallow with coffee. But in a weird (and bizarre and horrifying)way it sounds like the ultimate in asceticism. I wouldn't know how it reads or plays, because I don't think I could read or watch such a story. Despite my body image demons, I'm still glad I have one. But still...

I don't see anything male about the head in a jar thing ... it's about sentience, about consciousness, isn't it? Integration/differentiation, that stuff. I've not read any happy stories about it, but as a bit of conjecture it strikes me as no weirder than many, and no less "deserving" of print space.

All the head in a jar talk is hard to swallow with coffee.

It would be really hard to swallow coffee if your head was in ajar?

(sorry, that's all I've got. I think the coffee hasn't hit the brain yet.)

It's an expression of Cartesian duality - it turns up in Beckett's trilogy as the last stage of Malloy/Mallone/Worm's descent.

Sara, you can have the head in coffee.

All caffeine, all the time.

Jim -- I knew there was a fancy term sitting out there waiting for me to learn.

It would be really hard to swallow coffee if your head was in ajar?

Unless the jar was filled with coffee, in which case you'd quickly get over caffinated. And you wouldn't be able to see anything. And someone might try to drink you, unless they were also a head in a jar, which would make it difficult, and... when it got cold, it would be kind of icky.

;)

But no, it goes back as far as that - basically, if all we can be really sure of is the fact of our own consciousnesses, then how do we know we aren't rains in jars? Descartes frigged it by invoking God as a sort of external certainty. I go with the "so what?" theory - OK, so this whole world is an illusion and I'm a brain ina jar. That doesn't mean that my experience is going to go away, so i might as well live as if t'were real.

It's The Matrix, kinda, isn't it? For me, the interest in the brain in the jar scenario is one of control and perception. If this isn't real, can we see what is? What can we change? What does outside look like?

Exactly. And, actually, that's an even older idea - Plato, we're in an cave, looking at shadows on the wall. And yes, there is the hope - and it's an incredibly seductive one - that you can somehow think your way out of the world of illusions and see the world as it is. I tend to assume it's illusions all the way down, but that's because I read too many postmodernists too young.

BTW, have you seen any Matrix2 reviews? It's starting to sound a wee bit, well, iffy.

And someone might try to drink you.

Uh, there's not a lot of things I wouldn't do to service my caffeine addiction, but I think I can safely say that having someone's decapitated head floating in my coffee would at least make me ask for extra sugar.