A Sense of Self

The Software of Selfconsciousness

The self-model, in its most up-to-date form, must exist in the short-term memory, "hovering on the brink of amnesia". Here it MUST be refreshed, minute by minute, if it is to continue. Here it is forced to re-assess itself. Here it must be stripped down to the few elements that short-term memory can handle. Here it is that we "know what we know", that we "know who and how we are." Here, also, it can be interefered with by external narratives, hijacked by malicious others.

The self-model is a learned trick. It is a piece of cultural software. It has no dedicated neural wiring, I propose. This makes it fascinatingly shaky as a process. It would imply its absence in severely culturally deprived people e.g. feral children. It would imply different versions may exist in different cultures, e.g. amongst Budhists, Capitalists, or Hunter-Gatherers for instance. It is Memetically evolved to its cultual task.

What are those tasks?
How might it be to have someone elses self model?

posted by Phil Rimmer @ 12:40 pm