# The self: an Urban Legend? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 25, 2002, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810 "2002-05-25T17:27:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2002, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/61 "2002-05-28T16:52:23Z")
## **perspective** , to sum up what I think you’re saying: Self exists outside the realm of introspection. Part of “self” is a conscious model of a thing called (mistakenly) “self”. ## I, self, identify with me, “self”, though what I identify with is not really what we think of when we say ‘self’. (tried to make those quotes all make sense, hope that doesn’t look too confusing) I’m not sure whether or not I agree with this… ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2002, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/62 "2002-05-28T16:59:21Z")
## Oops, figures I screw that up… here is how the post should read. **perspective** , to sum up what I think you’re saying: First, self exists outside the realm of introspection. Part of self is a conscious model of a thing called (mistakenly) “self”. ## I, self, identify with me, “self”, though what I identify with is not really what we think of when we say ‘self’. (tried to make those quotes all make sense, hope that doesn’t look too confusing) I’m not sure whether or not I agree with this, if it is an accurate rephrasing. ---
**Author:** ![perspective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@perspective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perspective)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2002, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/63 "2002-05-29T00:14:37Z")
**DSeid** , I finally had a chance to read the Varela article. It’s interesting, I think somehow we arrive at a similar view, yet possibly from different directions. > [@](#): > > I see the mind as an emergent property, and the very important and interesting consequence of this emergent property is our own sense of self. My sense of self exists because it gives me an interface with the world. I’m “me” for interactions, but my “I” doesn’t substantially exist, in the sense that it can’t be localized anywhere. **erislover** , Thanks for trying to restate my views. Some of it is pretty close. > [@](#): > > First, self exists outside the realm of introspection. If by self you mean the “set of representational capacities of the physical brain”, or as Varela would prefer," An emergent property, which is produced by an underlying (biological) network". I wouldn’t call this self though. > [@](#): > > Part of self is a conscious model of a thing called (mistakenly) “self” Make that an UNconscious model. Self (without quotes)is the same as above. You actually did confuse me with the last part. I’m not sure what you meant there. “not really what we think of” is a bit vague. ---
**Author:** ![ethic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/977dab/32.png) [@ethic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2002, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/64 "2002-05-29T19:00:09Z")
Many contemporary scientists are still all caught up in this body thing. Unfortunately, Hume and other corpuscularians really have put a permanent rubber stamp on our times! Undeniably, Descartes did have a problem with his dualistic theory. Note, however, that this has nothing to do with the validity of his meditations on the certainty of the self. Descartes, after having concluded that he existed, postulated that there were two worlds: the world of the body and the world of the mind, made up of entirely different things. But this creates a problem, because how does mind extend into the material world? And how does the material world extend into the mind if they are not of the same substance? Hume and others explained this dichotomy away by claiming everything was material. The world could be entirely explained in terms of tiny corpuscles. Action at a distance was dismissed as unreasonable. And, of course, the soul had to go to. Obviously, it was just a chimera. The self was nothing but an elaborate illusion. And so, it remained a fleeting nothing, nay a hoax, until… As we peered further and further into the material world, the weirder it got. Eventually the certainty of a purely material view point began to collapse. Not all things were best described as bodies. Some things were better, in theory, described as waves. But waves of what? Waves of themselves. And yet scientists kept hanging on to bodies because bodies seemed more reasonable than anything else. Especially biologists that never had do deal with stuff like Schroedinger’s cat. After all “God did not play dice” and “EPR” was just a stupid hypothetical experiment. And along came Darwin, Crick and Watson and others to prove that biology was, after all, a purely mechanical enterprise. No more of Aristotle’s strange 4th causation. No more final cause! No more teleology! No more nonsense! While physicists grew more and more wary of their own findings, biologists grew ever more certain. I say: enough! If there’s anything I’m certain about, it’s my “self”. It’s there, whether I dream or I’m awake. Every conscious moment it follows me. Yes, it’s like breathing. I need never consciously focus on it. Nevertheless, it’s always, always, always there, whatever way I turn my attention. And I’ll never even know when it’s gone, because when it mysteriously disappears I disappear along with it. Much more mysterious than the self is what surrounds it. At times I have experienced the walls of reality come crumbling down, the very certainty about what is and what isn’t melt away before my eyes. But, never, never have I for an instance doubted that I, my self, was there to witness what went on. Since Awareness miraculously unveiled the world to me, language, its primary tool, has been my magician. Discerning patterns in the chaos of phenomenological occurrences and syntactically manipulating them, I have saved my sorry ass from disaster time and again. Guided by my "self " I have, believe it or not, even done some good in this world. Then why is it that people continue to be so insistent on this phony materialist notion of bodies being the quintessential substance, the “be all end all”, if it excludes the possibility of a real “self”? It baffles me. Aright then, ETHIC, what is the alternative? It’s nothing new like most things under the sun. After all, atomism has been around for around 2500 years. In the 17th century, Leibniz speculated that the world was made up of what he called MONADS, souls, tiny centers onto themselves that encompassed everything in-and-of-themselves. He got the word MONAD from the Greek term _monas_ meaning _one_. He also believed reality was a continuum. Furthermore, he didn’t believe that space existed in any absolute sense. Space was merely defined as the relationship of objects at any given point in time. Or, as he put it, “an order of the existence of things, observed as existing together”. I’m not proposing we start using the term _souls_ in science. What I am proposing is that we adopt Leibniz more relational model of reality. In such a universe, the world doesn’t emerge from matter. Rather, matter phenomenologically emerges from a more fundamental metaphysical layer I call _informational space_. All phenomena are the result of relational acts between in-and-of-them-selves meaningless singularities. It may seem only subtly different from a body theory. But in truth it makes a universe of difference. The atomic parts of such a reality become not _indivisible particles_ but _informational units_. The “self” no longer seems like an ephemeral absurdity, but a plausible extension of the natural world. Awareness can be described as the informational patterning within an informational pattern itself. A model creating a model of itself. The human body, the brain, is in such a view a complex set of relationships. Although only in a highly abstracted metaphysical sense, it becomes a linguistic network from which meaning (and indeed self) can emerge without any mysterious forces or strange dualistic dichotomies. The implication would also be that the distinction between what is organic and not organic becomes moot. Therefore, as long as an informational structure can replicate itself within itself without too much loss of information, awareness can arise. Computers could indeed have some limited sense of self! Most current robots would, however, be no more aware than a fly. I’m not unaware of the criticisms of such an idea. For example, if connectivity suffices, is the Internet aware? Probably not. I would postulate that any informational pattern, in order to be distinguishable as a self, would have to form some critical cohesive structure phenomenologically recognizable as common goals for the pattern as a whole. A goal would be the intent to establish specific preferential states. Or, in other words, an order of existence of things, observed as existing together. Not only the degree of connectivity becomes relevant, but the patterning of such connectivity. Summa summarum: our skepticism shouldn’t be directed towards the phenomenon of self, but the absurdities of materialism… ETHIC ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/65 "2002-05-30T00:59:49Z")
**ethicallynot** , I (and I think Churchhill and Varela would as well) agree with your conclusion that > [@](#): > > the human body, the brain, is in such a view a complex set of relationships. Although only in a highly abstracted metaphysical sense, it becomes a linguistic network from which meaning (and indeed self) can emerge without any mysterious forces or strange dualistic dichotomies. The implication would also be that the distinction between what is organic and not organic becomes moot. Therefore, as long as an informational structure can replicate itself within itself without too much loss of information, awareness can arise. Computers could indeed have some limited sense of self! Most current robots would, however, be no more aware than a fly. while not accepting any of your preamble! (BTW, Look at “the new theory of everything thread” and the “Wolfram’s New Science” thread for further discussions of the importance of nonlinear dynamics.) Consciousness and the sense of self, are emergent properties. There is no way to look at neurons connected together and predict how the whole will experience reality. There is no way to predict that light of such and such a wavelength would be experienced as red, or that vibrations would be experienced as sound. Or to convey what those experiences feel like without having experienced them or to someone who hasn’t. They emerge out of complex interrelated feedback patterns of connectivity between real material things. These properties are real even if they are not themselves material, and they emerge from the material world. Get out of that classical philosophy rut [dodges arrows and rotton food] … where a linear system takes Man from “his original state” and follows him out. Self _spirals_ out of a biological need to differentiate from nonself (immunological and other systems) to a metaphysical sense of self and consciousness to societal group dynamics, retaining self-similarity at multiple levels of analysis. Epistemologies are not actually created de nova out of nothingness, they evolve, they spiral nonlinearly, from what precedes. The universe operates according to such nonlinear dynamics. Study development of self ontogenically (the ontogenesis of ontology), study how the self evolves through different species, study how perception evokes conception and layers into consciousness, and then we can begin to really understand our “selves” and beyond. As to what is implied by “connectivity suffices”. Yes, it does imply that with enough connectivity and layered self-referentiality a “global mind” can emerge from the internet. It suggests that anthills may actually have conscious thought. It suggests that a meta-consciousness may exist beyond our understanding emerging out of the connectivity between humans within societies. It does not follow that any of these consciousnesses will be anything that our selves can understand or appreciate or communicate with. I can’t even imagine what it is like to “think like a bat”! I should understand what it means to think like a meta human consciousness? The key to investigating such strange and wondrous possibilities is to define exactly what about the strange loops is definitive for human consciousness. Once a definition is established then conclusions that may seem absurd, may be reality nevertheless, even if beyond our imaginings. ---
**Author:** ![ethic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/977dab/32.png) [@ethic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethic)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/66 "2002-05-30T02:26:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Get out of that classical philosophy rut [dodges arrows and rotton food] … where a linear system takes Man from “his original state” and follows him out. Self spirals out of a biological need to differentiate from nonself (immunological and other systems) to a metaphysical sense of self and consciousness to societal group dynamics, retaining self-similarity at multiple levels of analysis. Epistemologies are not actually created de nova out of nothingness, they evolve, they spiral nonlinearly, from what precedes. It’s strange but it’s as if you have this need to polarize our opinions, whether its about terrorism or metaphysics. 😉 You conveniently place me in the dusty-clad chambers of antiquated philosophers whereas you associate yourself with the cool swift new age of non-linear dynamics. Did you even carefully read my preamble? I admit I was being a bit over the top. Nevertheless, if you agree with my conclusions, you aught to look more closely at how I came to them and what I’m saying. And how you conclude that I ever said anything like… > [@](#): > > … where a linear system takes Man from “his original state” and follows him out. …baffles me. It’s as if you want me in this corner so that you can go on a tirade about your favorite theme: SOS (self-organizing systems). As a matter of fact, I don’t disagree with you! All I’m saying is that “mind” is as certain as “matter”. And to close the dichotomy between the two, I unify them within a single _informational space_ where one can transmute seamlessly into the other. It no longer makes sense to view “matter” as a the most fundamental of all layers. This idea does not contradict anything in high-order analytic modes. It merely allows us to shed old habits like the idea that _action at a distance_ is impossible. If synchronization in the EPR experiment isn’t due to physical communication between correlated particles, but some relational act made possible at the emission point, then superluminal signaling doesn’t seem so spooky, does it! In this view, the universe becomes something best described an informational matrix (or space). Time, space, matter, organisms, self, all emerge from this layer. Relational acts become the stuff that everything consists of rather than one-dimensional strings. Instead of focusing on the _objects_, we direct our mind to the _state_ defined by their interactions (or relationships). If you’ve ever done any ER (entity relationship) modeling or other system design, you will be familiar with the subtle difference this implies. SOS modeling is certainly more about the overall relationships of particulars than their individual characteristics, so a model like this makes more sense. ETHIC ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/67 "2002-05-30T04:22:18Z")
**ethi** 🙂 Sorry if I went overboard. My digs at classical philosophy were generalized and not specific, the specific was to the Leibniz et al reference, which as I read it, sounded more like the informational space was Plato’s metaphysical ideal forms with the material world as the shadows on the wall. But like I said, I think that our conclusions are not far off, just couched with different jargon. I don’t know entity relationship modelling but would be happy to learn about it. I’ve been thrilled to learn about enactivism in this thread! My big love is Steven Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory (a neural networks system) which I see as a model of not only neural systems (my particular interest), but for meta-applications as well, including the development of epistemolgies themselves. That said, I do see the value in your informational matrix phrasings. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/68 "2002-05-30T14:16:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by perspective \* > If by self you mean the “set of representational capacities of the physical brain”, or as Varela would prefer," An emergent property, which is produced by an underlying (biological) network". I wouldn’t call this self though. Well, I wasn’t out to say what you explicitly meant by “self”, I thought you were simply saying that what we are thinking of when we think of “self” isn’t actually what the “self” is. We have a map of San Fransisco. The map isn’t San Fransisco, and when we refer to the map we aren’t thinking of the map. We’re thinking of the actual streets of San Fransisco. Yet no model of San Fransisco could be as complete as the real thing without being as big as the real thing, else San Fransisco could contain itself. That I could personally have a conception of my self is a sort of Russel paradox. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/69 "2002-05-30T15:38:31Z")
Exactly! \ The “self” is an abstract representation of all of the current state of the information system itself and that representation is contained within the system which is consequently modified by that new update of that very representation … ad infinitum. And the various writers being quoted here all take the view that that very so-called paradox, that Hofstadter “strange loop”, that sef-referentiality, that snake biting its own tail, is what leads to a conscious sense of self. Even more so, you place that representation into the what-if of others minds and other hypothetical situations! ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/70 "2002-05-30T18:03:15Z")
And oh **ethi** , Let me link you to some old threads. The first was when I first started posting last September and was asking if any such things as nonlinear epistemolgies existed [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=92366](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=92366) The second is a thread on consciousness and identity and continuity: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=101187&perpage=50&pagenumber=2](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=101187&perpage=50&pagenumber=2) My link gets you to the second page of the thread. I think that you and I and I are saying very similar things here, but I am using a visual metaphor of n-dimensional geometric “objects” (really clouds) embedded within a conceptual space and subjected to geometric transformations, whereas you are more comfortable with matrices and willing to extend such to beyond the space of the mind. I’ll quote from the pertinent posts … > [@](#): > > I’m going to start of with defining “object” to mean any concept held in the mind, whether very concrete or very abstract. > > The mind can define objects according to many domains, dimensions, and subdimensions: shape, location, motion, surface characteristics, color, smell, sound characteristics, drive significance, number relationship, and so on and on. In each of these dimensions a certain ideal spot may be prototypic for that object, and a certain range around it is acceptable, with some rate of drop-off in that acceptabilty. > > Thus every object has some shape in this n-dimensional space with potentially fuzzy margins of decreasing best fit.This can range from the very specific - my particular red ball that has that old musty rubber smell and the divot right there that only bounces in particular ways - which have a range of wavelengths that are accepetable and a range of smells, but fairly narrow across many dimensions - to the very abstract in which one dimension is very sharply defined and all others are let to be any shape whatsoever - like the concept of the multiplicitive inverse, which can apply whether considering apples or galaxies. > > The exact shape of each of these spaces, and of the prototypes, is influenced by: our experience with exemplars of the object; by context modulation; and by expectations. > > So to illustrate: if I hold shape to a square and color to blue, but let other dimensions vary, then the abstract concept of a blue square and any blue square is held in my mind. If I instead let shape vary some, hold texture fairly steady, color a narrow range around pastel blue, then I have (more or less) my prototype for my son’s blue blankie. Note that his prototype would put more emphasis on its smell, texture, and drive significance, than mine would. We hold different features as salient. As blue blankie frays through the years, our space and prototype for it changes … out of constant experience with these changes and expectations of them. For each of us a wide variety of perceptual inputs will be acceptably classified as blue blankie. We both identify the same object under most normal circumstances as blue blankie, but the meaning of blue blankie emerges to each of us differently out of our interaction with our preceptual inputs. > > These shapes can be applied against dimensions other than those in which they were formed. So a wheel can inspire the abstract concept of a circle, which can then be applied to other data sets, like the motions of the planets. I liken this to a geometric transformation of the object (in this case a rotation) and wonder if the metrics can be defined (and much work in the neuropsych literature supports that many of these metrics can be defined) then these transformations can be rigorously modelled by those with enough mathematical expertise (which ain’t I). I also acknowledge that these transformations do not create perfect fits and are streched and squeezed in their new locations (for example, the planets are not really in circular orbits, the concept was molded into ellipses to make it fit) These operations I liken to topologic alterations. And I suspect that if the metric was well defined, and someone had the mathematical expertise, it could be modelled for many sorts of concepts and metaphors. > > To bring this back to the question of identity. If some major aspect of an entity is changed, then the identity issue depends on whether that aspect was along a critically salient and/or narrowly focused dimension to the particular oberver or not. This is different for different classes of objects and for different observers in different contexts. Erislover, I maintain that to hold the same standard for identity for all cases of objects is ignoring these issues.Is there an objective reality? Of course. Do any of us percieve it? No, not directly. Our understanding of it is filtered through our perceptual abilities, functional needs, and personal experiences. Each of us forms our own model of it. Since we share similar perceptual faculties, and share common experiences, our internal representations of external reality are often similar enough to allow reasonable communication. > > Usually. > > … > > “Identity” really means stable classification by the observer. The last bit is pertinent to our conversation about “self” (trying to save this from a blatant hijack) The informational system that has self-referentiality is always classifying its representation of its own current state as its “self”, even though that representation is constantly changing. okay. I’ll shut up now. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/71 "2002-05-30T18:26:28Z")
Debates about the notion of ‘self’ can become a little tangled because there are so many different fields of study involved. In terms of cognitive models and language, ‘self’ is simply a label which applies to an organism’s perception of its own presence, and its own ability to inter-act with what it perceives to be non-self. Like any other label, it has no intrinsic value. It is valuable if you have a use for it, and use it. Otherwise, it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2002, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/72 "2002-05-30T18:46:45Z")
Yay, the identity thread! Good read, that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![perspective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@perspective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perspective)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2002, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/73 "2002-05-31T04:07:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by erislover \* > We have a map of San Fransisco. The map isn’t San Fransisco, and when we refer to the map we aren’t thinking of the map. We’re thinking of the actual streets of San Fransisco. Yet no model of San Fransisco could be as complete as the real thing without being as big as the real thing, else San Fransisco could contain itself. Try this: all of these things are qualities we normally attribute to the self in our daily lives I have a brain I have a mind I have a body I have senses But on reflection, it seems more like there is a body which has a brain, which has a mind, which has a self that experiences sensation. The self is created by a mind as a map, so to speak, only all of these qualities are attributed to the map that are really only in the streets. There’s a fundamental confusion between the map and the city that only becomes clear in a certain state of mind and most people can only maintain this for a brief moment. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2002, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/74 "2002-05-31T05:23:26Z")
Alternatively, there exists a bundle of body, mind and selfhood, all of which interact with each other. Separately, the self seems to be a useful analytic construct. I find it difficult to ground incentives or motivation, for example, without some notion of a self. I also find it challenging to restate the following: I feel perplexed. I feel like a cheeseburger.\* I am a US citizen. (My body has citizenship? That doesn’t sound right.) GWB believes X. As risks change, we who care about civil liberties need to realign balances between security and freedom. Oops, wrong thread. \*[sub]Funny, you don’t look like a cheeseburger.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![perspective](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@perspective](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perspective)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2002, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/75 "2002-05-31T05:56:57Z")
**flowbark** , yes the self is handy thing, I agree. I wouldn’t know how to function without recognizing a self. Yet, “function” in our society generally means acting in self interest and being aware of others as other selves. Apparently, in Buddhist practice, self interest can be largely overcome through mindfulness. There might be other ways to live… ---
**Author:** ![ethic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/977dab/32.png) [@ethic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethic)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2002, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/76 "2002-05-31T21:30:47Z")
> [@](#): > > **DSeid** > That said, I do see the value in your informational matrix phrasings. It’s very useful. The purpose of _informational space_ is a total paradigm shift. Instead of concentrating on OBJECTS, we concentrate on RELATIONSHIPS. Why should we do this? To begin with, objects are in fact the grand sum of relationships between their constituent parts. So if we slice, reduce and dissect reality long enough, we should end up with _pure relational acts_ between otherwise meaningless entities. Relationships are more fundamental than objects to any epistemic system. Meaning, ultimately even awareness, are best described in terms of “an order of the existence of things, observed as existing together”. Even geometry (as Leibniz accurately noted) is best defined in relational terms. A is _further from_ C than B. Leibniz even refuted that geometric space existed outside of such relational contexts. To Leibniz, space was _relative_ rather than _absolute_. The implications go beyond mere abstract notions about the substrata of reality. The individual becomes defined not by who he is _in-and-of-himself_ but rather who he is _in respect to others_. This has consequences for everything from physics to ethics. Until recently, I thought this idea was only sparsely appreciated in the contemporary scientific community. But then I discovered [process physics](http://www.socpes.flinders.edu.au/people/rcahill/processphysics.html)! I highly recommend reading about this stuff. > [@](#): > > **erl** > That I could personally have a conception of my self is a sort of Russel paradox. When a set of RELATIONSHIPS is sufficiently rich to form a _satisfactory_ description of itself within itself, the concept of SELF can arise. There’s nothing Russelian about SELF. The concept of yourself isn’t the same as the _acts of relating to all other things_ in-and-of-themselves. SELF is no different from your map of San Francisco. It’s only a model of the city, not the city proper. As a matter of fact, you can never be fully aware of who you are in all of its entirety if you by this mean forming a 1 to 1 model. Simply put, the reflection in the mirror is not YOU but merely an IMAGE OF YOU. So you can’t erroneously equate SELF with YOU. SELF is the IMAGE OF YOU, hence imperfect in many regards. For example, when I hear my voice recorded, I recoil in surprise at how it sounds. I ask others, “That’s how I sound?”. “Sure”, they say, “Why?”. Yet in moments when I’m not hearing myself recorded, I have only the vaguest notion and memory of what I apparently sound like in reality (to others). Obviously, my notion of what I am and who I am is quite limited. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2002, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/77 "2002-05-31T21:45:19Z")
I didn’t say there was anything paridoxical about the self, but there is if you think you can have (or do have) a complete conception of it. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/78 "2002-06-01T00:34:38Z")
**ethi** , You can actually make heads or tails out of those process physics articles? Whoa. I think that I get the point, up to a point, (especially with the help of the New Scientist simplified review) but get lost pretty quickly in the emerging and enlarging fractal process space embedding self-replicating fractal topologic defects. I can’t make out what pseudo-objects (whose relationships are supposed to produce what is percieved as space-time) are supposed to be (?except relationships of informational systems themselves?). And the relationships both exist in a geometry (embedded 3D hyperspheres) and are the geometry? I have a freind who works at Fermi, I’ll have to ask him if he’s heard of this stuff and what he thinks. Very interesting. And again geometry and matirces are both describing the same thing. The only way to handle large n’ed vectors is with matrices (I think). The geometric metaphor just helps us visually oriented folks get a handle on things. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2002, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/79 "2002-06-04T04:11:54Z")
**ethicallynot** , [This article](http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1) by Kurzweil, a review of Wolfram’s new book cited by **astro** in another thread, has some views that you’d find appealling: > [@](#): > > In my view, the fundamental reality in the world is not stuff, but patterns. > > If I ask the question, ‘Who am I?’ I could conclude that, perhaps I am this stuff here, i.e., the ordered and chaotic collection of molecules that comprise my body and brain. > > However, the specific set of particles that comprise my body and brain are completely different from the atoms and molecules than comprised me only a short while (on the order of weeks) ago. We know that most of our cells are turned over in a matter of weeks. Even those that persist longer (e.g., neurons) nonetheless change their component molecules in a matter of weeks. > > So I am a completely different set of stuff than I was a month ago. All that persists is the pattern of organization of that stuff. The pattern changes also, but slowly and in a continuum from my past self. From this perspective I am rather like the pattern that water makes in a stream as it rushes past the rocks in its path. The actual molecules (of water) change every millisecond, but the pattern persists for hours or even years. > > It is patterns (e.g., people, ideas) that persist, and in my view constitute the foundation of what fundamentally exists. The view of the Universe as a cellular automaton provides the same perspective, i.e., **that reality ultimately is a pattern of information. The information is not embedded as properties of some other substrate (as in the case of conventional computer memory) but rather information is the ultimate reality. What we perceive as matter and energy are simply abstractions, i.e., properties of patterns.** As a further motivation for this perspective, it is useful to point out that, based on my research, the vast majority of processes underlying human intelligence are based on the recognition of patterns. Bolding mine. Thought you’d find it of interest. ---
**Author:** ![ethic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/977dab/32.png) [@ethic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethic)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2002, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810/80 "2002-06-04T17:56:10Z")
Very interesting. Thanks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-self-an-urban-legend/110810.md?page=5)