**Links to**: [[Agent]], [[Individual]], [[Generative model]], [[Pronoun]], [[Free energy principle]], [[Vantagepointillism]], [[Recursivity]], [[Entropomorfismo]], [[Perspectivism]], [[Perspectival anxiety]], [[Polycomputation]], [[Constraint]], [[05 Prediction]], [[World model]], [[Xpectator]], [[Subject]], [[Subjectivity]], [[Intersubjectivity]], [[The body problem]]. The things we think subjects/agents are, are supposed to house things called _selves_. Under this dialogical understanding, a self is necessarily what _other selves_ understand it to be. This leads us to strange, recursive regresses, but that is not a problem: everything else does, too. Before we know any better, it’s seeing as seeing as seeing as, all the way down. This project follows a radical take on active inference, and what this means in light of the above is that a supposedly “individual” agent houses not just a model of their own self, but that this self is necessarily _infrastructured_—following the architectural metaphor—by a collective, distributed, virtual _Geist_, or intersubjective reality, with which it is in permanent conversation. As one begins self-modeling, one learns by imagining or modeling others, within one, in order to imagine oneself, etc. And so does everyone else. As De Jaegher and Di Paolo put it: “Individuals co-emerge as interactors with the interaction” (2007, p. 492). This is clear in collectively intentional moments, such as dialogue, music, dance,^[Thompson (2015) even describes the processual self as a dance.] etc. Where, exactly, is agency and/or control? This is the problem of the generative model (see: [[Generative model]]). The “perfect model” can never be obtained, both because we live in dynamic, ever-changing environments and because we never have complete access to our environment through our senses. Thus, the current best model is not the “true” representation of the environment, but the one that yields the least prediction error relative to one’s adaptive goals or necessities. These events elude our language (a lot of natural language, at least), as they are dynamic, participatory, evolving: whatever we model will only always be a hypothesis, a partially predictive snapshot. There are ways in which we can model the modeling, in the context of Bayesian and active inference: the problem is that models are coupled with models coupled with models. It’s models all the way down (that is: the organic, affording condition of seeing _as_). Even though we can understand the ways in which these models are partitioned, by Markov blankets, we are a far cry from understanding what it is that truly drives our interest in their generation. Which is why the experimentalism of something like generative AI leads us down rather unexpected roads. Necessarily so. Whatever we call the self is thus (inter)active, relational, processual (Kyselo 2014). “The self thus never just _is_ but rather emerges continuously and jointly relying on behavior and action and on doing and being together with others.” (ibid. 2015, p. 8). This process can be compared to that of cell-development in multicellular organisms: the cell is not a linear, isolated unit, but exists in communication and symbiosis with other cells. Daniel Dennett uses the analogy of a _center of gravity_ to explain the structure/behavior of the self: it is not something that can be seen or usefully pointed at with precision, nor something which would be interesting to narrow down in terms of an exact description (1992, pp. 1-10). It is semantically useful, as an abstraction delineating the dynamic margins of a _tendency_ (see: [[10 Bias, or Falling into Place]]), but nothing more than that. At a very clear level of geistig abstraction (forgive that as what is almost an oxymoron for the example that follows), W. J. Harris notes: “When James Baldwin says of himself, “I was the son of a slave” (_Nobody_ 4), which is not literally true, he is partaking of a symbolic self, speaking from a self larger than the personal one.” (Harris 2004, p. 317). Or, even better: ![[baraka harris 8.png]] p. 321. Though the above might imply a kind of mind-body dualism which separates the material from the functional, it is, for our purposes, the ‘good’ kind. The kind where the mind (as “self”) is social, distributed (through others, through media, through history), and the body is its vessel (see also: [[Hardware-software metaphor]]). Another way to see this dualism is in the way Shaun Gallagher distinguishes between two different notions of the self: the embodied (minimal) one, a concept based on a phenomenological history of proposing the sensing a primary, fundamental, pre-reflexive being _there_.^[D. Zahavi explains that a way to understand this minimal component is as that which distinguishes, or individuates, one agent from another in terms of their experiences (2014).] Then there is the narrative (extended) one: the constructed, coherent, logical one. Considerations which can lead to some problems in dividing things as such are dealt with in detail by Kyselo (2015), for example the problem of marking a distinction between social and individual autonomy. In our context, however, that is not a concern/question, as we disregard the usual understandings of autonomy/agency/control altogether (see: [[Control]], [[09 C is for Communism, and Constraint|09 C is for Communism, and Constraint]], [[Xpectator]]). What seems to be a challenge is the body, given that it appears to set a pretty rigid _house_ for the self, reifying its isolation. The body thus presents us with what we can call _the body problem_. ### The body problem The body problem can be summarized as: for any human, scientific phenomenology to even begin, we need to assume embodiment. Embodiment seems to be what leads to perception, prediction, motion, etc. Embodiment, however, seems rather lonely: one exists (as one, many and none) in a single body. Selves might be fluidly plural (collective being, self-modulation, psychosis, psychedelics, etc.), but the phenomenal experience of the body is by and large assumed to remain **one**.^[Statistically speaking of the majority, of course, there also exist situations where the body is plural and dynamic in ways we are not going into here, think phantom limbs, etc.] As Kyselo puts it: “...there seems to be a strong intuition that ... a core self, if you will – can be associated with the body as an organic, separate and individual entity.” (2015, p. 3). However: we know that the body, too, is subject to permanent change, and that reducing it to an object cut-off from the “rest of the world” is only a convenient predictive fiction. Therefore, we can argumentatively disregard it for now, as a useful illusion, and continue thinking down paths which are more extended, thus leading to greater future affordances (the more, the merrier. See also: [[Light cone]]). Kyselo argues for a non-individualistic, social view of the self by warning that “embodied cognitive science risks a new form of methodological individualism, implying a dichotomy not between the outside world of objects and the brain-bound individual but rather between body-bound individuals and the outside social world.” (2015, p. 1). The author argues that “the human self is a social existence that is organized in terms of a back and forth between social distinction and participation processes” (ibid.). In our context we reframe this as an abstraction pertaining to [[Difference]] and [[Equivalence]] operations, very broadly construed: differing is distinction and equivalence is participation. Additionally, this can be further enhanced by understanding learning (exploring-exploiting) under active inference: the trade-off implicit in learning (play, risk, etc.), which balances complexity/novelty/contingency/noise with simplicity/expectation/sameness/prediction, is this same mechanism behind coupling and semi-decoupling^[As full self-decoupling is only possible in death, only from the dead thing’s perspective, not from the rest.] with all sorts of (social) affordances/attractors.^[See also: [[12 Negintelligibility]].] In this project, to think of the self **or** the body is to think not of individualist frameworks, but of coupling: how can [[Collective intentionality]] result in something _even better_ than what it is now? %% The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition Michael Levin 1 2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31920779/ Kyselo: what is the self? # The body social: an enactive approach to the self https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00986/full and this one: file:///Users/soniadejager/Downloads/The%20Fragile%20Nature%20of%20the%20Social%20Mind.pdf The Fragile Nature of the Social Mind A Commentary on Alva Noë Miriam Kyselo In this paper I argue that while Noë’s actionist approach offers an excellent elab- oration of classical approaches to conceptual understanding, it risks underestimat- ing the role of social interactions and relations. Noë’s approach entails a form of body-based individualism according to which understanding is something the mind does all by itself. I propose that we adopt a stronger perspective on the role of sociality and consider the human mind in terms of socially enacted autonomy. On this view, the mind depends constitutively on engaging with and relating to oth- ers. As a consequence, conceptual understanding must be seen as a co-achieve- ment. It is a fragile endeavour precisely because it depends not only on the indi- vidual but also on the continuous contribution of other subjects. Four most prominent contemporary views: ### Substance view (Corabi and Schneider 2014, Lowe 1996, 2001, 2009, Nida-Rumelin 2014) Goes back to Descartes. The idea is that the body, made of distributed systems, lacks the unification to hold experiences etc. together in the way that an entity such as a self can. This View holds that selves are basic entities which are not reducible to other entities, they have object-like properties such as qualities en relations. ### Standard phenomenological view (Gallagher and Zahavi 2015, Parnas 2003, Parnas ans Sass 2011, Sass and Parnas 2003, Zahavi 2005, 2014, Zahavi and Kriegel 2015) The main claim of which is that the minimum self is constituted by pre-reflexive self-awareness. In this view every conscious experience is constituted by a pre-reflexive self-awareness. Sonia says: this may be disputed in light of DMT and other related experiences. Inspired of course by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre. "Experiences are characterzed by a quality of *mineness* or *for-me-ness*, the fact that it is *I* who am having these experiences. All the experiences are given (at least tacitly) as *my* experiences, as experiences *I* am undergoing or living through. All of this suggests that first-person experience presents me with an immediate and non-observational access to myself, and that (phenomenal) consciousness consequently entails (minimal) form of self-consciousness." (Gallagher and Zahavi 2015, section 1) ### No-self view (Krueger 2011, Metzinger 2011) Also add Bach on simulation here. The self is phenomenologically inescapable but this doesn't mean that the self exists metaphysically. The self is a phenomenological illusion. ### Relational view (Ciaunica and Fotopoulou, Hutto 2018) The self can only arise in relation to others. This proposal is a bundle of views characterised by this principle idea of relationality. Hutto claims that we can only develop a concept and sense of self if we are able to use language, develop self narratives, and use Concepts in language in general. __________________________ [[06 Principle of Sufficient Interest]] is the [[Principle of Sufficient Reason]], as we see here: [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] in [[Self]]-[[Reliance]]: "The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as [[Intuition]], whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun." pp9-10 # We lie in the lap of immense [[Intelligence]], which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. "But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching." p13 %% ### Footnotes