Plural subjectivity for materialists

This article isn't targeted at those who have a more spiritual framework for their otherworlds as much as it is for those who don't quite grok otherworlds or individual histories not connected to the front body's.

I believe it is utterly possible to identify with your own history and experience subjective space without invoking any 'woo-woo'. 

The first point is that it's subjective. Most people, plural or not, have a self-image that may or may not conform with the way their physical body appears. That's just how psychological dualism, or the body-mind split, works, even if there isn't a concrete split between body and mind. For plurals with otherworlds and appearances that are drastically different from their front body, it's just an extended version of what happens with most human beings, in my opinion.

Plural groups with different appearances, backgrounds and worlds don't generally claim that those attributes are present outside the confines of the system's brain. We see those differences in our minds' eye, and identify with those attributes of ourselves, but we know that none of those things are visible at front.

Darwin does not go round saying that our body is eleven years old. She experiences herself as an eleven-year-old within the system, but she knows perfectly well that we've lived much longer than eleven years as a system and will be perceived as such when she fronts. People who have abilities that would be considered 'supernatural' within Fenspace don't claim to have those powers out here. They recognise that when they front, they just don't have those abilities.

There's a big difference between being non-human in-system and making claims that 'when we front, the body becomes less human', or 'when Charles fronts, our shoe size changes'. No, your front body cannot become 'less human' as you front. There's no way that your fronting is radically altering your DNA in a way that makes you non-human. And your shoe size can't be altered by people fronting, unless your bones magically grow, or your feet magically swell. Same applies to skin colour, hair colour and other physical characteristics. We're not suddenly going to have blue eyes because I front, or grow to be 6'4" because M.D. is fronting.

I also don't hold with the idea that you absolutely must identify with every aspect of your physical body to be sane. It's unrealistic to expect that. 

There's also the 'subconscious affinities' idea—that is, the person might already be there, but they develop a connection to their perceived past or appearance over time as their personality develops at front. It's a bit like a plural version of Susan Blackmore's thought-experiment/hypothesis that she posed in The Meme Machine; in her view, everyone's personality is subconsciously formed by memes. In essence, it's a 'subconscious affinities' hypothesis, but not merely for members of plural systems whose identities don't match the front body's. (I don't agree with her idea that consciousness as a solid element cannot exist, because I do believe that there is a central, subjective 'I', but some of the rest of her ideas are pretty intriguing.)