I think your explanation in section 8.5.2 resolves our disagreement nicely. You refer to S(X) thoughts that “spawn up” successive thoughts that eventually lead to X (I’d say X’) actions shortly after (or much later). While I was referring to S(X) that cannot give rise to X immediately. I think the difference was that you are more lenient with what X can be, such that S(X) can be about an X that is happening much later, which wouldn’t work in my model of thoughts.
Intuitive model underlying that statement: There’s a frame (§2.2.3) “X wants Y” (§3.3.4). This frame is being invoked, with X as the homunculus, and Y as the concept of “inside” as a location / environment.
How I describe what’s happening using my framework: There’s a systematic pattern (in this particular context), call it P, where self-reflective thoughts concerning the inside, like “myself being inside” or “myself going inside”, tend to trigger positive valence. That positive valence is why such thoughts arise in the first place, and it’s also why those thoughts tend to lead to actual going-inside behavior.
In my framework, that’s really the whole story. There’s this pattern P. And we can talk about the upstream causes of P—something involving innate drives and learned heuristics in the brain. And we can likewise talk about the downstream effects of P—P tends to spawn behaviors like going inside, brainstorming how to get inside, etc. But “what’s really going on” (in the “territory” of my brain algorithm) is a story about the pattern P, not about the homunculus. The homunculus only arises secondarily, as the way that I perceive the pattern P (in the “map” of my intuitive self-model).
I think your explanation in section 8.5.2 resolves our disagreement nicely. You refer to S(X) thoughts that “spawn up” successive thoughts that eventually lead to X (I’d say X’) actions shortly after (or much later). While I was referring to S(X) that cannot give rise to X immediately. I think the difference was that you are more lenient with what X can be, such that S(X) can be about an X that is happening much later, which wouldn’t work in my model of thoughts.