Self exists outside the realm of introspection.
Part of “self” is a conscious model of a thing called (mistakenly) “self”.
I’m not sure whether or not I agree with this…
First, self exists outside the realm of introspection.
Part of self is a conscious model of a thing called (mistakenly) “self”.
I’m not sure whether or not I agree with this, if it is an accurate rephrasing.
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.
erislover , Thanks for trying to restate my views. Some of it is pretty close.
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.
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.
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
ethicallynot,
I (and I think Churchhill and Varela would as well) agree with your conclusion that
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.
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…
…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
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.
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.
Exactly!
<I chime in, even though I was not being addressed, how rude!>
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!
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
The second is a thread on consciousness and identity and continuity: 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 …
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.
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.
Yay, the identity thread! Good read, that.
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.
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]
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…
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! I highly recommend reading about this stuff.
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.
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.
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.
ethicallynot,
This article by Kurzweil, a review of Wolfram’s new book cited by astro in another thread, has some views that you’d find appealling:
Bolding mine.
Thought you’d find it of interest.
Very interesting. Thanks.