Our tour group has rented an outboard for a day of Pacific sightseeing.  We putter along the coast, contented.  We clear a promontory, and two islands come into view.  The islands are much alike:  each a shining ring of sand surmounted by palm thicket.  A mile of ocean ripples between them.

       We dock on the westward island to take our lunch in palmshaded view of its counterpart.  A resident greets us and we share lunch with him as he educates us in the fauna of local seas.  Then he surprises us.  He declares that these two islands are "invisibly connected."  They are not two islands at all, he says, but only one.

       We wonder if he isn't having a bit of fun with us.  After all, the islands are marked on our tourist map as separate geographical entities:  no bridge or reef links them.  His statement seems incredible.  We protest, but he stands by his claim.  "Spend the night here," he says.  "You'll see for yourselves."

       It's a friendly invitation.  We take him up on it.  Beers and cards are produced, and we practice card tricks in his living room as day rolls into night.

       The moon ascends, and our host packs up the cards.  "Now, to the invisible connection."

       We follow him to the beach, pausing together when the sand softens underfoot.  We search the night horizon for the second island, and for the alleged "connection."

       When our eyes come to terms with the moonlight, we locate the second island.  We see no great change in its appearance.  And then we see that our host has pulled off a clever card trick.  For while we mastered Vegas shuffling techniques, a spring tide ebb stole in — draining the intervening waters entirely.  At this moment the two islands are no longer separated by a mile of shallow ocean.  Dry land connects them as one.

The narrative metaphor expresses something of that pre-verbal intuition which has sparked the phrase "existential passage."  What is pre-verbal cannot of course be expressed adequately in words, especially here, at the limit of subjective being.  Subject-verb syntax cannot express the subject in transition. We can however give some meaningful interpretation to the metaphor.

       We can interpret the two islands as representing two personal identities, such as those of Nicos and Thanos.  Those identities are distinct throughout the duration of their lives.  We have reason to mark them down on the "map of life" as separate islands of being.

       But islands are entirely dependent upon the ocean for their existence.  When a deep spring tide ebb drains the ocean between them, the islands which were formerly separate merge into one.  They remain as one until the ocean returns to divide them.   This all occurs effortlessly, by default.

       Nicos is likewise dependent on the criteria of personal identity for his (seemingly) independent being.  When the criteria fail him at death, he loses his independence; and by default he merges across an unfelt time-gap into whichever personal identity next assembles into being.[13]

Now, a note concerning repetition:

       Some verbal constructions have been of necessity repeated within this chapter.  Repetition can trick us into admitting words with a too-easy familiarity, even if the concepts which those words represent remain mysterious in their details.  And I shouldn't want to lull the reader into any such false habituation.  If I cannot eradicate the offending pattern altogether, I can correct the deficiency almost as well by alerting the reader to it.

       Here is an example:  In several passages I have reiterated that Thanos "receives" Nicos' "personal identity" through "existential passage."  We should resist the pull of that repetition by bracing to the fact that the words in quotation marks are not incantations.  They cannot drive the passage event by wordplay.  That would be tantamount to "forcing the lock."

       The definitions, phrasings and logical inferences of this essay are nothing more than glosses on nature's corpus.  Nature must drive the passage event, and nature — pervasive, generative, mysterious nature — is capable.  Reliable, too; even the very standard of reliability.  Where nature assembles necessary and sufficient conditions for a phenomenon, we trust nature to deliver the phenomenon.

       That trust applies to essay conditions, as everywhere.  Existential passage is plausible only if it is understood to transpire by means as natural and reliable as the ebb and flow of tide.

My interpretation of the tidal metaphor drops a phrase to plumb my thoughts on existential passage.  I've spoken of the tide as acting "effortlessly, by default."  The phrase, "by default," has seemed to me apt enough to deserve permanent attachment to this philosophy.  This is why "Metaphysics by Default" is now the chosen name.

       "By default" — what pigments of meaning can that phrase brush across the metaphysics?

       One meaning draws from the popular vernacular.  When we make a "default assumption" about some subject we are assuming what is most common or most likely true about that subject.  This is how we treat subjects which are uncontroversial:  subjects which are established and trustworthy in our minds.

       The academic knowledge which I have cited in chapters past is mere textbook material.  It has been peer-reviewed and discussed in earnest — in some cases over a span of hundreds of years.  By this method corporeal existence, delimited by complete mortality and personal identity, has risen to the level of a default assumption in our time.  A metaphysics which relies upon corporeal existence can lay honest claim to the title "Metaphysics by Default."  The wind is at its back.

       In contrast, a metaphysics which would attempt to contravene corporeal existence would find itself today bucking a strong headwind.  The defense of such a metaphysics would have to address a number of issues, including those raised in this essay.  A few hypothetical examples can push some issues to the forefront:

       For example:  An immortality metaphysics might posit that our memory of life can survive the grave.  Now, to support that position the argument would need to demonstrate some means whereby our memories could be recalled sans neocortex and hippocampus.  Otherwise the argument would be seen to ignore evidence which speaks against it.

       Or perhaps an immortality metaphysics might posit that the corporeal body cannot produce some vital psychological state.  To support that position the argument would need to define this psychological state clearly, then make clear the impossibility of any corporeal production, and then propose some incorporeal means of attainment.  (This was Proclus' approach.)

       Or possibly an immortality metaphysics might deny the putative individuality of each personal identity, blurring living individuals into an undifferentiated One.  To support such a trans-personal identity hypothesis, the argument would need to provide evidence of a functional linkage between living minds; or else expose some crippling deficiency in the individualistic criteria of personal identity.
       Well, these would all be herculean labors.  We can see just how it is that immortality raises so many intractable problems for the modern philosopher.[14]

       Metaphysics by Default circumvents these problems. This new transmigration philosophy ventures no immortality conjecture. Instead it uses two natural keys — found in mortality and personal identity — to open a metaphysical lock; deducing a type of transmigration that is not encumbered by the many hard problems of immortality.

       Within the philosophy's modern and widely-accepted conceptual framework existential passage occurs naturally, even "by default."

Cicero portrays nature as an unpredictable loan shark.  She has tossed this loan of life to us unrequested.  We lack the means of satisfying nature's usurious demands, and so we simply hold onto the loan until such time as nature will call it in.  When that time comes we will do as all have done before us.  We will default upon the loan.

       This meaning of "default" does also color the philosophy.  It is a classical brushstroke which should not be omitted from the finished work.  I add it here in order to complete that singular effect which the title "Metaphysics by Default" should rightly convey.

This concludes the preliminary definitions and arguments for Metaphysics by Default.  At this point the mechanism of existential passage is secured: understandable and defensible, it's a concept deserving sober thought.