Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3140409.html
Rikus -
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I'll start from Nick's model. My brain has learned to turn back
it's third-person perception and modelling functionality on a subset of
the environment that is always present, i.e. self.
This is a fairly clear (to me) description of how I interpret Nick's
point... I'm not as clear that this is _the way things are_ but I can
hold it along with the other 5 impossibleish things I had for breakfast
with the Red Queen.
Semi-aside: there is something added in the case of self
-- richer sensory data that is not available on other people: touch,
pressure, pain, temperature from skin, breathing and heart rate,
proprioception, stress and pain in joints, vestibular sense, stretch
receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, etc.
This seems somewhat contrived, but without using up another one of my 6
impossibles over breakfast, I accept this as well.
I do think all of this enriches the model of self to the point
where the experience might be qualitatively different from the models
of other people.
I agree that if "all is Third Person" then this is a reasonable
explanation why the "First Person Illusion" is so compelling.
But more significant is the fact that I can create an abstracted
model of myself (i.e. imagine myself) and that the model can be made to
interact with a model of the environment, other people, and even
internally created models with no counterpart in direct experience.
Consider that usually this model's usefulness is in projecting it into
the future (and, I think, into the past, when we reconstruct events
from memory).
And I contend that it is unique compared to say my "abstracted model of
other people interacting with a model of the environment ...." because
*I* can run experiments directly on myself which are somewhere between
difficult and impossible with others. Learning our environment (when
we first see our own hand in front of our face as a baby, or when we
first leave home and face the vagaries of living in the world as an
independent adult) appears to be a continuous series of hypothesis
generation and testing with that ability to intentionally do "this and
that".
Now, what happens when that model is dragged back into
real-time, and held right next to the more direct perceptual awareness
of self? It seems like one might end up with two selves, and I'm
wondering if that experience might not account for that
elusive experience that Russ is referring to.
Interesting. Having experimented with my 1st person experience a lot
in my life, I do have a related experience. It renders in my life as
a sense of multiple-personalities. I have multiple models of myself
based on how I imagine/believe I am perceived by various individuals or
groups. This is more of a past-tense experience (I experience it as
remembering being different people in different circumstances) more
than a present-tense one (returning from a predictive model of self to
an immediate experience of self).
- Steve
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