Just to expand on my above post, Bakker seems to be suggesting in blog post that the thoughts we are conscious of - and which sometimes get converted into speech - are just mechanistic end results of unconscious cognitive processes. When he speaks about reflexive blurts (note the quote was wrong - it is a 'reflexive blurt' rather than a 'reflective blurt') I think he means that our thoughts, which we take to be central to our sense of self, are just these end products of a pre-determined process.

If the NG is a system creating these reflexive blurts (i.e. "what do you see" etc), that would suggest that with the subject/object distinction collapsed it has no access to any information about itself. It is entirely reliant on being told what it is by something outside itself.

The second possibility, that it is 'system requiring external self-referential information, no longer internally modellable, for utilitarian purposes', would suggest that the subjectivity suggested by the NG speaking is in fact an illusion, and that it is in effect just a machine which needs additional information in order to do its job.

I don't think these two possibilities are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I'm not sure how to explain why I think that!

Anyway, I think this might add an additional layer to this discussion, although I don't know enough to explore it much more fully. But it does seem to me that this might tell us more about the type of consciousness which characterizes the NG, and which seems pretty crucial to how it functions given all the stuff about subject/object distinction being collapsed.

Hello from a long-time lurker. This is a really interesting discussion, it seems to me like you're all getting a lot closer to something here. I thought I'd add in this bit of info Bakker dropped on his blog in response to a comment ages ago, which someone else linked to on the forum  (http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=824.msg5570#msg5570):

The link to where Bakker says this on his blog is here: https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/the-person-fallacy/#comment-12281

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Quote from: Callan S.
I thought there was a 'What is the No God' thread but can't find it now. Thought I'd log this clue dat wuz found.

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AD

So is “tell me what you see?” a “reflective blurt” or a system requiring external self-referential information, no longer internally modellable, for utilitarian purposes?

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rsbakker

Shrewd, AD. Very shrewd.

Eleazarus' accusation also seems to suggest that the Mandate also collect faces.

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Day for night. Night for day. Lies. All lies.

Coming so soon on what Skiotha taught young Nayu about Day for night and night for day and that this revelation came from Lokung we should make a connection here Cnaiur misses. 

Lokung taught the People that the World is a Lie.

Moenghus taught Cnaiur that the People are a Lie.

Kellhus reminds Cnaiur of Lokung's lesson, he specifically thinks that what Kellhus does is invert, that everything becomes a lie around him. 

so the connection we should perhaps make is that Kellhus and the NoGod make similar, parallel insights; perhaps this is foreshadowing that Kellhus is the NoGod?

This is one of the most interesting parts of the chapter imo. It'd be good to get onto the next book and look at Kellhus's weird visions about the No-God, rather than all this setting up stuff...