My only real exposure to the recursive self-symbol idea has been through Hofstadter’s I am a strange loop and perhaps Dennett’s Consciousness explained. (Maybe one should refuse to put these in the same category as the research mentioned in this post though.)
The material on blindsight and anosognosia forced out a confusion in my understanding of the idea. You write that blindsight is “where someone is able to see, but don’t represent themselves as seeing.” It is natural to ask, why don’t they just update their self-model? So I guess that the self-model must be partially accessible to conscious read/writing, and partially accessible only to subconscious read/writing. Maybe only the former is characteristic of human-style consciousness. So the recursive arrow pointing from the self-symbol to itself needs to be unpacked into multiple arrows representing these different types of access.
They normally have a lesion in v1 preventing visual information from reaching either the ventral or dorsal stream. Basically meaning that non-cortical visual systems still work, but everything in the cortex doesn’t get to use it.
If the consciously accessible sections of the self-model are based in the cortex (which I think they are), then damage to v1 should prevent self-model updates.
Though, Metzinger mentions a case where someone had anosognosia for a year, then suddenly realized that they were blind.
My main (possibly only) beef with Hofstadter is the idea that the self symbol refers to itself. I currently think that it kind of does that, but in a very roundabout non-infinitely looping way.
Basically, you have all these systems that make you do things, and inputs from the body. When the doing-stuff systems make you do something, your body changes, and your self-model updates. The updated self-model is used by other parts of your brain to do more stuff, but your self-model for the most part updates after the fact.
Well, a lot depends on how precise I want my description to get. The conscious/subconscious distinction is a very high-level approximation; when I get down into the details it’s not especially useful. There are a lot of more-or-less independent processes, some of which have self-monitoring functions (and can therefore be considered “part of the self-model”) to varying degrees in varying contexts, with varying degrees of cognitive permeability and conscious control.
More generally, I find it often helps to think of my mind as a collection of individual agents with goals that are not quite aligned (and sometimes radically opposed). So, sure, the “self-symbol” “modifies itself” in lots of different ways, just like the U.S.Senate does, but there’s nothing mysterious about that… it’s what you expect from a system with lots of moving parts that interact with one another.
My only real exposure to the recursive self-symbol idea has been through Hofstadter’s I am a strange loop and perhaps Dennett’s Consciousness explained. (Maybe one should refuse to put these in the same category as the research mentioned in this post though.)
The material on blindsight and anosognosia forced out a confusion in my understanding of the idea. You write that blindsight is “where someone is able to see, but don’t represent themselves as seeing.” It is natural to ask, why don’t they just update their self-model? So I guess that the self-model must be partially accessible to conscious read/writing, and partially accessible only to subconscious read/writing. Maybe only the former is characteristic of human-style consciousness. So the recursive arrow pointing from the self-symbol to itself needs to be unpacked into multiple arrows representing these different types of access.
They normally have a lesion in v1 preventing visual information from reaching either the ventral or dorsal stream. Basically meaning that non-cortical visual systems still work, but everything in the cortex doesn’t get to use it.
If the consciously accessible sections of the self-model are based in the cortex (which I think they are), then damage to v1 should prevent self-model updates.
Though, Metzinger mentions a case where someone had anosognosia for a year, then suddenly realized that they were blind.
My main (possibly only) beef with Hofstadter is the idea that the self symbol refers to itself. I currently think that it kind of does that, but in a very roundabout non-infinitely looping way.
Basically, you have all these systems that make you do things, and inputs from the body. When the doing-stuff systems make you do something, your body changes, and your self-model updates. The updated self-model is used by other parts of your brain to do more stuff, but your self-model for the most part updates after the fact.
I feel like this should be the summary of a neural-koan. (Or maybe a LW koan—if there can be hacker koans why not LW koans?)
I think bayes koan would be a more proper term. And yes there should probably be some large post for making and collecting as many such as possible.
Well, a lot depends on how precise I want my description to get. The conscious/subconscious distinction is a very high-level approximation; when I get down into the details it’s not especially useful. There are a lot of more-or-less independent processes, some of which have self-monitoring functions (and can therefore be considered “part of the self-model”) to varying degrees in varying contexts, with varying degrees of cognitive permeability and conscious control.
More generally, I find it often helps to think of my mind as a collection of individual agents with goals that are not quite aligned (and sometimes radically opposed). So, sure, the “self-symbol” “modifies itself” in lots of different ways, just like the U.S.Senate does, but there’s nothing mysterious about that… it’s what you expect from a system with lots of moving parts that interact with one another.