Additions in the translation (as later deemed necessary) in <angle brackets>
I wrote this text originally as a response to the talk, but I think it could be interesting in its own right, hence me putting it up in a translated variant for a wider audience. Also I added some comments, partially because of the terse nature of the original text, partially because of the difficulty translating it, in order to give sufficient context as necessary to avoid misinterpretation, or at least the most obvious ones (as understanding cannot, even in the best cases, be actually clearly seperated from the context it is about / it reconstructs)
The question, how a system can be _internally complex_, even though it is, in that, of which it consists, simple, seems to me essentially connnected to the form, or the kind of connection of the parts amongst each other. In the platonic-aristotelian tradition is the very term for this form <(of something)> nothing but the signification of precisely the idea, of what it <[= the described thing]> is <(i.e. its essence/what-it-is)>: ειδος, ιδεα, i.e. form and appearance as the idea of the whole, that then gives us the starting point of the thought of it. <That is, the word describing the shape of an object (which is nothing else but the platonic eidos/idea, from which we have the word idea, is), came to signify generally the "shape" of something to be, and therefore its appearance/essence - and from that than the idea of a "thought of it". The thought of something however is still different to any thought merely pertaining to it, as it describes the act of thinking _of something_, that is specifically the act to find out what something else is, by _thinking it_. (This difference is one I take from Hannah Arends obituary to Heidegger, where she talked about how he "thought something", instead of merely thinking about it, and how that relates to the idea of essential capture / eidetic reduction, where we can draw parealles to Plato as well as Husserl, which she doesn't do, but which is also, in light of the obvious quality of this material and thought, hardly necessary)> Aristotle called this <(the form/shape/idea> also an αιτια, i.e. a reason or cause, and claimed, that in living beings especially, this cause would act as a ψυχη, as a soul, and would cause then the organisation <(here also in the higher, romantic (i.e. referring to 18th Century romanticism) idea of the organic - of that was is connected by means of the idea of a whole and of order, by which descriptions _organisms_ are not merely living things, but orders in themselves, where one part is of use (tool = organon) to the other, and has a relation to that totality)> of the living forces (as a taking/passive principle in plants <(i.e. of eating and taking nutriants)>, additionally as a principle of striving in animals <(i.e. of desire, choosing direction, senses etc.)>, and within us too as a principle of thought, so in accordance to a thricefold divide of merely passively being <[this is tricky to translate because I don't mean passive things; I mean a passive _being_ in that this passivity is itself a way for the world to be; its a to-be, not a what-is (Sein, nicht Seiendes, as Heidegger might have said), which is difficult to repeat in english, but can in this context be maybe explained by that I don't mean, that plants in this view are merely passive things, but that theyre very mode of being is that of passivity, one we (or at least our bodies) also fall back to if we think that as beings dependent on food, our bodies necessitate a certain "passive being-in-the-world", in that we exist, even to our own reflections, as objects and depdencies of chaotic circumstances, that produced on this planet enough to eat, and of societal decisions, that at least not entirely negate those original conditions]>, the will as such, and the thinking, connecting this both (which, in my view, would have to still be seperated more into the imaginative act and the henceforth created form of the thinking being <with "imaginative act", "act of imagination" or "noesis" I characterize the way thoughts themselves appear to the mind, if imagined; because imagination fundamentally is not, as sometimes presumed, playing with intuitions, as those have come from somewhere, and imagination comes, as it were, from nowhere; which makes sense if it actually is not playing with new base intuitions, but with thoughts already present. This can be fairly general - for example, I might already have the thought of color, and so I can imagine new colors, even yet unseen (although I cannot _see_ them, I can imagine they could exist, and wonder what it would be like to be able to look at them); and that is possible for the idea of color is already there, and imagination then is this playing with thoughts, given by "reality" (passive being, but also already enriched/connected to imagination, desire and though), driven by some sort of desire. Thought, as opposite to that, is the form of these ideas themselves; these forms, like that of the sentence or of predication itself, stay pasive during those actions, so that, if we see thinking/imagining as a form of act, we can think of reality as the peices, desire as the goal, thought as the rules, and imagination - as the act to play, or the fun of thininking. In this description then, it is obvious that they are necessarily connected, and the only question is how one then even can go over them, or if there is a right way to describe them, to give a good account of the complexities of the mind, playing with itself. > )). In this way of thinking about it, is the _more_, which constitutes the whole as a <purposeful, self-constituted> organisation in opposition to <the collection/sum/multitude/manifold of> its parts, and in such way distinguishes the chair from the wood <it's made from and carved>, this living <or material> form <or real-existing platonic idea> itself as an organising principle, and precisely not another part, or a material principle <(i.e. a content to be added to the sum of the parts, or an external material/physical cause missing from the description)>.
It has been rightly noted in the presentation, that what is shared within the plurality <i.e. what is shared between the alters of a system> is the organism and the system of communication, not the individuality. The formal cause <(of the mind, as described before)>, insofar it is this principle of striving or a kind of directedness, is precisely a description of indivual will. Insofar one can also say it like that: Being directed at something is maybe not the expression of the inner <part, element> of the mind or of will and desire; but it is that which is <causally> effective to the outside, against the other alters/persons. Insofar the connection is a communicative one, it is already from that a formal one, that communication is itself a kind of directedness towards a principle of symbolic mediation (naming, use of words); and therefore in every I of every alter there is this inner division in effect, that on the one side the desire <of this specific I/self> is in itself split and contradictory, on the other side however in every moment can only express itself in a certain way, in a specific striving, and therefore must for this very reason be misunderstood as one that is consequent/consistent in/with itself by the others, which misunderstood element of this partially unfree </ unwilling [a kind of pun in the German original text, hard to translate exactly; the idea here is that the will's action themselves can be "unwilling", in that they cannot but be understood as effects of its own inner contradictory deformations/inconsistencies]> effects of the will/desire as a dialectial one now however constitute a new content, a kind of idea of the externalized wishes <of the alter/person> as an image of will, or as the imagination of will by its own self-alienation in its actions <or in its actualization>.
The self-image in the foreign image <i.e. the way, in which I appear as being someone connected to myself, from the perspective of someone else looking at me> must be formally different from the own confusion, who I now should be <i.e. the other, when looking at me, must see something else then my own confusion of my identity>; however, that this foreign image still exists, is nontheless a constitutive condition of the confusion in the self-image <of myself>, because it only develops, driven by it, the desire, to even have something like a conception of the self, and to not simply be <( in other words, it's only because I see that what is perceived to be "me" does not match my own existence and imagination etc, that I have any need to understand what this "me" is, since it is not an object that appears to me in the world; but it does appear to others though the externalization/actualization of its will in actions, and by that, by proxy, it also appears to me in other peoples misunderstandings of who I am )>. In this way, we could understand the third aristotelean soul, thinking <(the reflective/contemplative mind)>, precisely as a mediation/connection of the other two, because it intends this attempt, to grasp that about passive existence, which evades <and is missed> and retreats in all dynamization and all behaviour of striving and practical will <i.e. of externalization and even of that, what we might think to know of its inner cause, the elemental aspect of desire (i.e. general desire, understood in connection to a specific element/object of desire, as opposed to "essential desire", or desire as such not directed to an object specifically (see here also Heideggers distincion of fear and anxiety (Furcht und Angst) in SuZ; anxiety here is the more essential negatory, and fear the more elemental negatory desire)>, namely the immediate[d]/unconditional element lying in that, _how_ I want <anything> and why <i.e. the how-I-desire, which is precisely the internal structure of essential desire of the self and its will-to-be, as well as its inner condition and negation (confusion and will-not-to-be)>.
One could also compare that to the Leibnizian thesis, of how monads behave in their apetitions, and indeed the intellectual engagement with Leibniz was decisve for me for the understanding of plurality <of myself and, before that, of its possibilty as an idea>.
However, I would make here a difference <between my understanding of the self/its externalization and Leibniz'es ideas>, that he thinks the monad to narrowly, and precisely doesn't allow for the plural monad <by thinking of the monad as a kind of _necesserily unified_ perspective>, and also on the other side, by that, connects the behaviour of striving to closely to the how and why of the inner will <too closely, that is, to even understand the complexity of a singlett subject; this was indeed the point from which I got a grasp on, one could say, the "plural aspects" in the dialects of consciousness as such>. It is here an important difference, where we put the boundary <between inner/outer, private/public, one/the other, self/world>: whether materially between celly, elementary particles, monads <(which for Leibniz famously were infinitesimal, so even smaller than modern physical elementary particles, and always unique (from which we have the problem, if we still want to think in these terms, how identical, and statistically correlated and entangled particles can be composed of different monads - of which we also would need a distinct description of an inside/outside dynmacs, or how monads could arrange, by their "behaviour" on that scale, to form these correlated complexes))> etc, or within themselves as between their form-for-themselves <i.e. not just essential desire, but also the _understanding_ of essential desire by imagination of the self, i.e. the idea of aspiration and of the good (a perspective idea tou agatou; or an evaluation of this desire, that in itself stays formal, but within its own form (the logos of its desire))> and its materialization in the possibilty for a decision <or externalization, or rather _the intend to to so_, i.e the expression of elemental desire> (which itself however is not necessarily direct, is still needs to be differentiates this decision, from its possible coherence in the sense of (quantum mechanical or even macro-physical) observation/measurement and operationalizabilty; a difference, that has consequence even as far as into sociology, where the action of striving, that itself is only an externalization/expression of the inner will, the form and the how <of myself and my inner, essential desire to be / experience etc.>, can itself appear within a greater study as an internum <internal element, as something hidden> and as something difficult to grasp <e.g. individual decisions in survey, which can be asked for, but appear as something "internal" relative to larger society, nonetheless they are physical externalizations of the mind through the body in their own right, even if they appear out of place in society> [ in which way too the "inwhichfar" of individuality, which was asked about <in JARVIS' talk> <namely> in how far cells of the body are, for themselves, individuals, can find an explanation; because I only have the How for myself <as a how-I-am, and in that too the that-I-am and the which-way-I-am>, and the other/external/objective being <= way to be; not things, but the way, in which I or other things, have this external mode of existence> can only be really thought of as <existing> in these various levels, to miss it as another how <i.e. to misunderstood the objective, in trying to understand it as a "How", and too then miss the "how" by thinking it could appear this way>, and so there is thought in all cases an internal division, however <there can also be a second division>, after the external division the place, where the moment-of-division (i.e. that, which is understood, differently from the "how", as a striving) is different and of different scales/order of magnitude <then within the internal division> [how it then later too was mentioned <in JARVIS' talk> in relation to the differential <i.e. different kinds of> self-organisation in and between untions of memories of the bodies <i.e. that the way in which these interactions between "selves" and "expressions" manifest, is different between alters, which share memorie, and between external bodies, however they also might have a kind of isomorphic structure of interaction> ] <- so that the "individuality" can be understood as function in a system of interaction, which constructs these different kinds of individuality, where sometimes the body, sometimes the alter, and sometimes, even within the alter, individual thoughts are the "individuals", so that there is a stratification between structurally and scale-based differences of differentiation (i.e. the differences between countries, groups, bodies, cells is physical in structure between all those models, but different in scale; the difference between identity groups, persons, alters as constitutive, and alters as co-constitutive of inner subsystems etc. is personal/essential in structure but different in scale; and too for the differentiation of ideas/thoughts (value-systems; a persons main principles; in that aspects, various arguments etc.) and along other axes of differentiation, which all might manifest themselves on various level of variability and scale )>] ).
However, that doesn't mean that there is no spacial separation/partition between the alters; they can very well be separated like the communicating living beings are, and then, for example, use the brain and also the rest of the body as a medium for their connection and organization <i.e. one can possibly think of seperate alters as "docked on" at different brain regions, and then sending body signals to interacting with that substrate that connects them to their extra-physical essences / manifestation-points of will/desire through "striving">; however, there still is. additionally to that, in each single consciousness, a formal division between its How and the Self in the external manifestation of striving <i.e. between self-conception and external image, as described before>. Soul would then be most appropriately used as the name for these relations of tension between the processes of striving and directedness of the inner wills <of all attending consciousnesses>, that refer back to the subjectivities and their <respective> How, but don't contain them, but only the relationship, that comes to be, after the fact, from their respective decitions and styles of behavior <i.e. as the relationship, that is mediated through the various foreign-images, that one alter has ot the others, and vice versa, through the necessarily narrow lense they have to view them through, namely the ways they were able to express themselves to the others as part of a unit of memory, body and physical experience, and of the capabilities they share (potentially) from the similarity of the positions of "docking" to the physical world>. (That is, as a formal _cause_ the soul is only the presence of these directnessess <i.e. the fact, that there is a medium of communication, through the externalization of the elemental desire, between consciousnesses, within the unit of memory of mind and, externally, of body [so here too a difference between inner and outer externalization; the inner externalization then that of multiple "docked on" consciousnesses on the same monad]>; as a completed _form_ however <it is> also the respectively contained substrates and elements, that move this directedness to a specific direction. <i.e. formally it only is, that a consciouness'es will expresses itself, directed outward, as striving; materially, as a completed form _within the matter_, it includes the guiding particles, moving one directedness to the completion of a _path_, and through a multitude of such paths, the various consciounesses to the unity of a connection, which then can be called the _form_ of the unit of memory within the body, of which the original directedness - i.e. the striving of the individual alter, first expressed through the manifestation of elemental desire in striving - was only the _formal cause_, which includes this whole material construct as a form of moving-in-a-direction, but not in the understanding of the consequences of this form, or of the shape of its fullfilled idea, as a "reality", attached to the idea of the thing created by the cause of an abstract conception.> The materilization of the inner How is itself however only the specific mode of directedness <in striving / the form of the soul as formal cause>, i.e, in scholastical terminology, that the I itself is only responsible for the incomplete _forma_, or only the _idea_, but that the soul can be taken in this and also in the meaning of the _forma materialis_, which in turn is the effect, that is created, over the course of history <of a body/life for example, or also of a subsystem etc.> through the directedness along the various strivings of certain directions. For this new reconception/rereading of the idea of substantial forms for plurality, it would be rewarding to undergo a new reading of scholastical terminology, and the various interpretations of it in Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham etc, to look out for the <terminological as well as substantial> effects, that they might have for the idea of the plural subject and its soul (especially in relation to nominalism, and its idea of naming/signification, and what <elements/principles> this leaves aside from the internal division of the how from the striving, and how it by that makes possible a new interpretation of idea realism <as understanding such inner divisions, as well as the dynamics of headmates/alters as in relation between ideas, and their manifestation in communication; where the nominalist tradition then has also correct ideas, in so far as it is about the signification of these manifestations/strivings, and how far they are, maybe even in the act of deciding, bound by this network of communication and the "significatory" form of the soul and (if for external boundings between mondas within the unif of memory) of the brain and the body, and its modes of significations/communications and their limitations, inscribed in that form>.)