Hey, I’ve read your posts about zoesthesia and empiricism, and they intrigued me a lot.
I would like to ask you about your takes on therians whose theriantropy is derived from their experiences of past lives and reincarnation (which is my case), and on physical therians. This is not meant to be hating or accusing in any way, the only reason I’m here is for a better understanding of your takes.
From what I understood (but I might be wrong) you deem the “spirit”, as well as “memories” not believable, because they’re not senses or thoughts in the present moment, but concepts some decided to deem real, and make them their belief. You said as well the past may not even be real. Yet you still put among the experiences of zoesthesia’s definition “memories”. Isn’t that contradictory?
Also, it seems you’re skeptical about physical/biological therians. Your definition of zoesthesia definitely excludes them when you affirmed that those who experience it are still aware of their human body and biology. I personally agree with it (and this is why I’m anon, since it is a controversial take). I accept physical therians as they are completely harmless, and even though I don’t understand them I won’t exclude them from the community because everyone is allowed to live and label their experiences as they wish. Nevertheless, if you’re labeling yourself as, for example, a physical wolf therian, you’re contradicting yourself. If you actually were a physical wolf, you wouldn’t need to call yourself a therian, hell, you wouldn’t even be able to understand the concept or make a Tumblr account. However, I am aware in most cases physical theriantropy is derived from delusions and policing them with logic is illogical in itself. I think people still deserve a place in the community, even if their alterhumanity stems from delusion. Many times it was formed due to neurodivergency or trauma, so what if their alterhumanity is illogical? Also, if the physical sensations and thoughts they experience are physical in nature, wouldn’t they be considered valid by empiricism?
This is the kind of response I was looking for. Thank you.
I'm unblocking everyone so they can read this too. I'm learning too and I apologize for removing your voices from this dialogue. Please keep replies civil and on topic. Repeated personal attacks will see you blocked again, as they are not constructive to this topic.
Newcomers: This reply is in reference to my recent blog post about zoesthesia, which has since been modified with feedback to be less pushy. I may need to modify it further with the details in this reply.
Now, anon - since you asked, I highly recommend that you read this response to the end because it gave me a rather severe existential crisis years ago.
"From what I understood (but I might be wrong) you deem the “spirit”, as well as “memories” not believable, because they’re not senses or thoughts in the present moment, but concepts some decided to deem real, and make them their belief. You said as well the past may not even be real. Yet you still put among the experiences of zoesthesia’s definition “memories”. Isn’t that contradictory?"
There are plenty of studies that suggest that you can convince people of memories that never happened. Every time you recall a memory, the brain is not actually replaying it - it is reconstructing a new instance of that memory each time it's recalled, sometimes adding or removing details. Each time you do so, you make a copy of a copy, which can cause that memory to become more and more distanced from what actually happened.
Because of this, memory is not as reliable as most people would like to believe (not sure how eidetic memory works, but it's been suggested that it doesn't exist past childhood, and photographic memory hasn't been confirmed to exist either). According to Wikipedia (there are multiple sources for this point), "Memory is not a perfect processor and is affected by many factors. The ways by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved can all be corrupted."
Memory is as believable as you feel it to be. For you, it may feel very believable - you've mentioned that you have past life memories and that they influence or are otherwise a part of your identity. It is perfectly acceptable to say "I feel like I had a past life as an animal because of these things that feel like memories." When you say that you have had a past life as that animal, usually this is shorthand for "I feel like" / "I believe" / "These things I interpret as memories and not just dreams or imagination make me believe that..." Shorthand is important - I'll get back to it.
I may be unconvinced that I have past life memories myself, even if I have explored things that could be seen as such. Everything that has been discovered about how memory works doesn't necessarily need to hold any bearing on what you believe. If you are convinced of your own past life memories, nobody else can assert that they are "real" or "imagined." If others assert that they are real, what they're typically saying is that they trust your judgement. And it is not constructive to assert that someone's past life memories are "fake" - trying to prove them right or wrong is a fool's errand.
The point of zoesthesia was to separate raw experience from interpretation. I put "memories" under the "experiences" category in the definition of zoesthesia - not because they are firsthand experiences, but because you may believe them to be memories of experiences. I remember that yesterday I was feeling very shifty, but today I am not. The discontinuance of those shifts does not make me feel that I need to completely reconsider my beliefs about my nonhuman identity, as I remember other times in which my shiftedness varied.
At the end of the day, whatever you use as a reason to believe that your inner experiences are nonhuman is up to you. Experiences are what most of us want to share anyway.
"Also, it seems you’re skeptical about physical/biological therians."
"...everyone is allowed to live and label their experiences as they wish."
Agreed. That doesn't mean that others are required to participate, though it is often respectful to do so when those beliefs do not affect others in a serious way. Certain religious beliefs, e.g. those that say all non-believers will spend and eternity in hell, do demand others' participation by default and should not be respected.
Nevertheless, if you’re labeling yourself as, for example, a physical wolf therian, you’re contradicting yourself. If you actually were a physical wolf, you wouldn’t need to call yourself a therian, hell, you wouldn’t even be able to understand the concept or make a Tumblr account. However, I am aware in most cases physical theriantropy is derived from delusions and policing them with logic is illogical in itself. I think people still deserve a place in the community, even if their alterhumanity stems from delusion. Many times it was formed due to neurodivergency or trauma, so what if their alterhumanity is illogical? Also, if the physical sensations and thoughts they experience are physical in nature, wouldn’t they be considered valid by empiricism?
I don't believe that these identities are inherently harmful, but I do feel that the way people with these identities talk about their experiences comes off as manipulative.
What they believe is what they believe, and that may as well be valid - to them. No one is under any obligation to respect that belief. Within the alterhuman community, even I have told people "I'm a wolf" - but I only do so there because people usually know what I mean by that, and it feels species-affirming to speak that way. For me specifically, it's incredibly reductive shorthand for: "I have these experiences that tell me I should have a wolf's body, my mind feels like it operates like a wolf's would, and my identity feels 'wolf', but I recognize that I have a physically human body and can't see inside another wolf's head to know for certain that these experiences are actually related." These kinds of things are usually implied.
Some physical nonhumans have said that they feel dysphoric when they look out and see human features instead of nonhuman ones (this does not fall within what modern psychiatry would consider a delusion). But when some of them speak about their experiences and say something like "I'm a coyote" - in the case of holotheres, I've been informed by those privy to the original discussions that this used to be shorthand for "Because this body belongs to an individual who identifies as a coyote, it is the body of a coyote." Which sounds like a technicality, but sure. Perhaps for purposes of "psyching" themselves up, this shorthand appears to have been morphed into "I have the physical body of a coyote, DNA and all, and the only way you can respect that belief is by believing it too! Respect me or else you're a bad person!"
I do not have an issue believing that someone is relatively grounded if their beliefs do not effect me. Calling someone their preferred pronouns (even if that's just "bird") takes 2 seconds to integrate. But this is a belief that demands something of me. It demands that I dismiss evidence that has been previously verified through peer-reviewed research - for example, the fact that if cells with such nonhuman DNA were to enter a human body, they would be immediately attacked by white blood cells. We haven't yet determined if there are genetic differences between physical nonhumans and humans. There are some of who think that would be a very bad idea to research, too, as they do not want our rights taken away. That is a valid concern. This leaves me with limited choices:
Participate respectfully, with skepticism I don't make known.
Participate and deny my "knowledge" of science.
Participate and acknowledge that I don't know everything.
Don't participate, but tell them they can believe however they want.
Don't participate, and tell them they're invalid.
These are the options most people see. But there is a hidden 6th option. Most often, I say, "That is what you say you believe and I am willing to operate under the idea that that is what you believe, call you your desired pronouns, and treat you like an *insert animal/gender/etc. here* would prefer to be treated." This does not require belief, justification, or skepticism at all. This is what someone who processes reality through the lens of methodological solipsism does. Through this lens, it seems as if the general public's understanding of empiricism itself is inherently flawed. Empiricism holds that knowledge is anything derived from sensory experience and direct observation, though most forget that even your mind's eye (and perhaps inner monologue) is a kind of "sensation" in and of itself, and there are many types of knowledge.
Infinitism, which is a key view that methodological solipsism takes into account, sees all knowledge as being made up of infinitely chainable beliefs (or justifications). In this view, "true" knowledge cannot be attained and belief always requires justification - "just because" isn't sufficient. One alternative (coherentism) suggests that there is some knowledge that is self-justifying, which in infinitism will always fall upon itself as circular reasoning.
Infinitism has two principles, whose definitions are rather algebraic. In plain terms, the Principle of Avoiding Circularity means: if the sun is hot, and it feels hot outside because of it, the fact that it is hot outside cannot be why the sun is hot. And in this context, the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness means: If it feels hot outside to you, that must be because of the current atmospheric conditions, which may be influenced by humanity's continued use of fossil fuels, which may be a product of their race for better technology, which may be influenced by their drive to survive…and these justifications can go on infinitely.
There is one more part to it, which is much more lengthy: the Availability of Reasons. For a reason to be objectively available, both it and its relation to other reasons must meet at least one of the following conditions:
An impartial, informed observer could accept it
It could be accepted by a defined set of people
Reason x makes reason y evident for you
That reason does not defy your own grasp of logic
It meets appropriate conversational presuppositions
An "intellectually virtuous" person would advance this reason
Again, only one of these needs to be true. I'm not a fan of the way #7 is worded.
Subjectively available reasons only need to coincide with personally held beliefs (therianthropy would probably be considered subjective at this time).
Only reasons that are both subjective and objective in this context are seen as candidates for justification. But through the lens of methodological solipsism, there is no truly verifiable difference between subjective and objective.
Methodological solipsism is a process that analyzes your senses, experiences, memories, and everything else currently happening in your consciousness. This is a reductive process finds that "true" knowledge, as in infinitism, cannot be attained. There is only experience (what you are feeling and thinking right now), and belief. In this view, your instinct and your own internal experience of your consciousness is the only thing that doesn't require justification. It just feels like it's happening. And in this view, even things that happen to you "externally" may just be recreations of them by your brain/soul/etc, as you only know these things because they are being received through your senses, which your brain is generating. Whether your experiences are "real," "imagined," or "simulated" is not knowable. You can believe such things about any experience, but that belief will never be "true" knowledge. This completely obliterates any necessity to empirically differentiate the brain from the body from the soul, reality from illusion, or valid from invalid. You can try...if you'd like to experience an existential crisis. If you're not already. If this isn't entirely confusing. Sorry lol
This is why I take issue with certain websites' definitions of things like therianthropy. To say that it is simply "the experience of being nonhuman" is to violate so much of this logic. Zoesthesia avoids this blunder by separating experience from interpretation, which may create an environment in which one does not need to "prove" their experiences.
TLDR - All of this is to say:
Do and believe whatever the hell you want, but follow your instinct and respect things that feel like concrete realities (like the laws of your country) (or don't - I'm not your mom).
Fight the seemingly concrete realities you don't want (responsibly).
Right and wrong is in the eye of the beholder. Nothing matters except everything that does (see: relativism).
Whatever you come to believe about yourself is what you believe. That isn't valid or invalid - it just is. The same goes for other people. Go wild with it if you want to but remember that it's reasonable to expect repercussions from certain folks if you use language that makes it sound like you're trying to manipulate them into dismissing their own senses. Clarifying that you are not doing this may show people that you're not and may make them more amenable to going along. Jumping to defensiveness, ad hominem attacks, and logical fallacies may make others wonder if you are.
Whether you see other people as "real" or "NPC's in the simulation" is up to you, but I've found that life generally feels better when it's assumed that others are real flesh and blood.
Be open to new data that may challenge your beliefs, since it is impossible to get through life without believing, and sometimes believing a certain way can put you in danger.
If you can turn off abstract thought entirely for a while (thoughts of the past and future, hypothetical situations, most complex chains of beliefs, etc.), it's a LOT easier to shift, as your mental load becomes negligible. You can feel like a nonhuman animal and not even believe that you are. You can just be. Having a mental shift outside like this can be a lot of fun, especially if you do it while you're camping. As always, be responsible and exercise good judgement. Vocalize if you want to - what other people think does not usually matter.0
A friend of mine summarized this perfectly: "It matters not whether my beliefs can be proven or disproven, what matters is how they guide my life."
There may be a lot of cases where these thought experiments aren't entirely helpful to consider in their entirety - you can "thought experiment" your way into anything, for better or for worse. At least for the purposes of personal beliefs, it is my personal opinion that this line of thinking may be sound, but it is usually more constructive to simply talk about what we feel and keep it in the background. When I'm feeling particularly shifted, I don't think about this at all. And as always, you're under no obligation to use these ideas.
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