Re: the 1st person problem. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise but I have done some reading on it. The way people think about the notion of self in a predictive processing framework has multiple aspects to it, for the different notions of selves. For instance, we have a notion of body-owner or body-self, and the idea there would be that proprioceptive (and interoceptive) signals coming up from your body to your brain act as input for the predictive processing model to work on. The brain can understand these signals as being part of a self because it has an incredibly good handle on predictions of these signals, compared to things in the external world. Another interesting aspect of this part of the framework is that action in this way of thinking can be brought about by the brain making a proprioceptive prediction that it in some sense knows is wrong, and then causing the muscles to move in appropriate ways to decrease the prediction error. It’s this feedback loop of predictions that is thought to underlie bodily self. THere’s some really cool work where they use V.R. setups to manipulate people’s perception of body ownership just by messing in subtle ways with their visual input that is used to support this idea.
This is different than e.g. the narrative self, which can also be thought of within the predictive coding framework as very high level predictions that include your memory systems and abstract understanding about the (social) world. These might be the things most relevant to you, but I know less about this aspect. I can point you to the work of Olaf Blanke and Anil Seth (who has a pop sci book coming out, but I recommend just going to his papers which are well written).
Re: predictive processing of motor control and your minor disgreement. Super interesting! Are you familar with this work from France where they seperate out the volitional from motor and proprioceptive signals by stimulating cortex in a patient? The video is mindblowing. Not sure exactly how it relates to your disagreement but it seems to be a very similar situation to what you describe.
Re: the 1st person problem. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise but I have done some reading on it. The way people think about the notion of self in a predictive processing framework has multiple aspects to it, for the different notions of selves. For instance, we have a notion of body-owner or body-self, and the idea there would be that proprioceptive (and interoceptive) signals coming up from your body to your brain act as input for the predictive processing model to work on. The brain can understand these signals as being part of a self because it has an incredibly good handle on predictions of these signals, compared to things in the external world. Another interesting aspect of this part of the framework is that action in this way of thinking can be brought about by the brain making a proprioceptive prediction that it in some sense knows is wrong, and then causing the muscles to move in appropriate ways to decrease the prediction error. It’s this feedback loop of predictions that is thought to underlie bodily self. THere’s some really cool work where they use V.R. setups to manipulate people’s perception of body ownership just by messing in subtle ways with their visual input that is used to support this idea.
This is different than e.g. the narrative self, which can also be thought of within the predictive coding framework as very high level predictions that include your memory systems and abstract understanding about the (social) world. These might be the things most relevant to you, but I know less about this aspect. I can point you to the work of Olaf Blanke and Anil Seth (who has a pop sci book coming out, but I recommend just going to his papers which are well written).
Thanks!
I have minor disagreements with the predictive processing account of motor control.
Yeah, I think “narrative self” is closer to what I want, for things like how the thought “I am lying” relates to the thought “Alice is lying”.
I’ll take a look at Olaf Blanke and Anil Seth, thanks for the tip :)
Re: predictive processing of motor control and your minor disgreement. Super interesting! Are you familar with this work from France where they seperate out the volitional from motor and proprioceptive signals by stimulating cortex in a patient? The video is mindblowing. Not sure exactly how it relates to your disagreement but it seems to be a very similar situation to what you describe.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1169896
I can’t figure out how to download the movies but presumably they are somewhere in that article. I do remember seeing them at some point though :/
The supporting online material says the movies are at http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/sir/article/videos_desmurget.zip but it’s a dead link, and I couldn’t find it at internet archive, and I can’t be bothered to email the authors. :-/
Very interesting article though. Verrrrry interesting. Thinking hard about it.