Thanks for your reply, am an unsure whether I am correctly understanding your position:
Would you agree that some of the aspects that make the ego/self different compared to shoulder advisors are the ones that I stated? (it doesn’t seem to contradict the formulation ‘privileged shoulder advisor’ as far as I can tell)
The ‘matter of degree’-question where our views differ is about the question whether there are such things as ‘shoulder advisors+’ that are e.g. halfway between a pure shoulder advisor and the ego?
If I am not misunderstanding you, this is a really interesting disagreement. To me, this topic is almost an alief-level view and I might have fallen for cognitive fusion. To possibly help with misunderstandings, I’ll just throw out my current thoughts on the topic. I expect there to be major mistakes or at least gaps in there, but I will not be able to improve them without working with them. Of course, it is also not necessary to solve our disagreement if you find it less interesting.
My current position: In principle, the agentic unity of the ego can be lost and instead scattered onto different agentic-type thought processes (think trauma, dissociation, identity disorders etc.). My impression is that this is usually quite harmful to the individual and generally not sth to strive for. Then there is a more or less separate ‘space of agentic-type thought processes’ that leans more toward ‘abstract world-modelling’, ‘agent-modelling’ and ‘abstract-goal-pursuing’ and less toward ‘episodic memories’, ‘bodily sensations’, ‘bodily urges’ and ‘fight or flight response’. Here, although most people tend towards unity from the ego plus a large number of simple goal-processes plus modelling people, it is possible and largely non-dangerous to build towards a number of larger bundles of thought processes such as shoulder advisors.
A, I missed a “t”. “can” → “cant”. Sorry about that typo. I mostly agree with it being a matter of degree. But I want to respond to this part of your comment:
In principle, the agentic unity of the ego can be lost and instead scattered onto different agentic-type thought processes
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity. I think the default mode of society is to encourage and reinforce an interpretation around ego, identity, and agency which is stable and beneficial (at least in the sense of societal productivity, I guess there are cultures with very differt patterns that are stable but probably less scalable e.g. the Piraha).
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity.
This sounds right. Maybe the cases that I am concerned about additionally contain fear responses, and purely having a non-unified or unclear sense of self is more normal/safer than I thought.
Thanks for your reply,
am an unsure whether I am correctly understanding your position:
Would you agree that some of the aspects that make the ego/self different compared to shoulder advisors are the ones that I stated? (it doesn’t seem to contradict the formulation ‘privileged shoulder advisor’ as far as I can tell)
The ‘matter of degree’-question where our views differ is about the question whether there are such things as ‘shoulder advisors+’ that are e.g. halfway between a pure shoulder advisor and the ego?
If I am not misunderstanding you, this is a really interesting disagreement. To me, this topic is almost an alief-level view and I might have fallen for cognitive fusion. To possibly help with misunderstandings, I’ll just throw out my current thoughts on the topic. I expect there to be major mistakes or at least gaps in there, but I will not be able to improve them without working with them. Of course, it is also not necessary to solve our disagreement if you find it less interesting.
My current position: In principle, the agentic unity of the ego can be lost and instead scattered onto different agentic-type thought processes (think trauma, dissociation, identity disorders etc.). My impression is that this is usually quite harmful to the individual and generally not sth to strive for.
Then there is a more or less separate ‘space of agentic-type thought processes’ that leans more toward ‘abstract world-modelling’, ‘agent-modelling’ and ‘abstract-goal-pursuing’ and less toward ‘episodic memories’, ‘bodily sensations’, ‘bodily urges’ and ‘fight or flight response’.
Here, although most people tend towards unity from the ego plus a large number of simple goal-processes plus modelling people, it is possible and largely non-dangerous to build towards a number of larger bundles of thought processes such as shoulder advisors.
A, I missed a “t”. “can” → “cant”. Sorry about that typo. I mostly agree with it being a matter of degree. But I want to respond to this part of your comment:
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity. I think the default mode of society is to encourage and reinforce an interpretation around ego, identity, and agency which is stable and beneficial (at least in the sense of societal productivity, I guess there are cultures with very differt patterns that are stable but probably less scalable e.g. the Piraha).
Ah, this makes sense thanks!
This sounds right. Maybe the cases that I am concerned about additionally contain fear responses, and purely having a non-unified or unclear sense of self is more normal/safer than I thought.