If the ancient (proto-human) mental construction of ‘self’ was a remodeled and turned inside-out version of the ‘other people’ mental construction, the distinction between signaling to nobody and signaling to yourself may not be on as sturdy grounds as it seems.
The idea seems to make sense: Evolution doesn’t jump in huge strides, so the progress from not-having-a-self to having-a-self must have been a cumulative one. The only place for similar parts to be worked on an advanced is within social behavior with your group, so that at least seems reasonable at the surface. Dennett suggests the role understanding our peers played in eventually training us in how to understand ourselves in ‘Consciousness Explained’, ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’, Dawkins mentions things like this in ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’, and in Clegg’s book ‘Upgrade Me’, he cites a similar human origin story.
So even when you are alone, you are still communicating and possibly signaling to an audience of one, perhaps. You are signaling to the entity you understand to be yourself the behaviors and actions you believe to be socially (personally) acceptable for you to perform within the confines of the private, one person audience.
It may sound strange but with the evolutionary underpinnings the ‘self’ may not be so wholly divorced a concept from the ‘other people’ as we thought. Since these behaviors only seem to indicate a change in expectations rather than a release of all social restrictions and responsibilities, I am not sure that these activities really signal a clearer and more rational state of thinking—just a different audience, different game. Just being alone doesn’t necessarily strip off the animal reasoning.
Perhaps less resources are devoted to the social game and that would be a legitimate reason to trust someone’s reasoning more, but then there are benefits to social reasoning too.
If the ancient (proto-human) mental construction of ‘self’ was a remodeled and turned inside-out version of the ‘other people’ mental construction, the distinction between signaling to nobody and signaling to yourself may not be on as sturdy grounds as it seems.
The idea seems to make sense: Evolution doesn’t jump in huge strides, so the progress from not-having-a-self to having-a-self must have been a cumulative one. The only place for similar parts to be worked on an advanced is within social behavior with your group, so that at least seems reasonable at the surface. Dennett suggests the role understanding our peers played in eventually training us in how to understand ourselves in ‘Consciousness Explained’, ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’, Dawkins mentions things like this in ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’, and in Clegg’s book ‘Upgrade Me’, he cites a similar human origin story.
So even when you are alone, you are still communicating and possibly signaling to an audience of one, perhaps. You are signaling to the entity you understand to be yourself the behaviors and actions you believe to be socially (personally) acceptable for you to perform within the confines of the private, one person audience.
It may sound strange but with the evolutionary underpinnings the ‘self’ may not be so wholly divorced a concept from the ‘other people’ as we thought. Since these behaviors only seem to indicate a change in expectations rather than a release of all social restrictions and responsibilities, I am not sure that these activities really signal a clearer and more rational state of thinking—just a different audience, different game. Just being alone doesn’t necessarily strip off the animal reasoning.
Perhaps less resources are devoted to the social game and that would be a legitimate reason to trust someone’s reasoning more, but then there are benefits to social reasoning too.