Dislocating the self
Shaun Gallagher,
iai,
Jul 06, 2020
This is a good article looking into just what constitutes the self. Ultimately, it will conclude that we should "to think of the self as a pattern of different processes, dynamically related to one another." What's key here is the self is "both everywhere and nowhere in the brain. That is, so many areas of the brain activate under different conditions involving self-reference or self-related tasks that no one area can be defined as self specific." What this should dissuade you from thinking is that there is a functional information processing architecture - there isn't an 'executive function', for example, and short-term memory is nothing like an 'information buffer'. These are examples of a homonculus theory of cognition, which should be discared in favour of an emergentist account. See more from iai magazine's issue 89 In search of the self.
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