> so, since this is so abstract (!), I'm curious if you could illustrate with
> something more concrete.
I'll try. But I'm cooking and drinking, plus the example I'm bringing up is "personal," not "political," so we'll see how it turns out. Sometimes when a person -- politicians especially are good at this -- is caught in an uncomfortable position, say an extramarital affair, that person might claim something like, I had a lapse of judgment, *I'm not the kind of person who has extramarital affairs*. Well, that's obviously bullshit: they *are* the kind of person who has an extramarital affair because, um, they had one. What that person is trying to do is separate their actions from some being they inhabit. They think that their being and their actions are separate things, that they have some say in which actions really apply to their being. They think that predicates can be applied to, or revoked from, their being without altering that being. Or, to put it in the way Mike discussed it, the effects that a "structure" has are like some clue to but not actual expression of the essence of the structure. But to my mind, those effects, the expressions and differences that they make, are essential to the structure. When you glimpse those effects, you *are* glimpsing the structure. In other words, observing each effect is "directly observing the structure," even if it is maybe a partial observation. (It seems to me now, after Mike offered a clarification to my post, that he was very much keeping alive the difference between effects and expressions, which most people, I think, tend to collapse.)
Okay, not very concrete. But it's the best I can do for now. Maybe more some other time.