[LINK] Being No One (~50 min talk on the self-model in your brain)
Summary: This is a ~50 minute talk (plus some introductory ado) by Thomas Metzinger on the problem of the experiencing, subjective self (why it exists, what it even means, how it arises). Not to be too cliché, but he attacks the problem by dissolving the question, and the solution he arrives at sounds a lot like how an algorithm feels from inside.
Using several examples from neuroscience (particularly the many illuminating failure modes of the brain), he explains how the brain models the self and its place in the center of experiential space. He discusses the limitations of our access to our own cognitive systems, and how those limitations force us to be naive realists.
I hesitate to summarize further, because there is a lot of value in hearing the entire argument. (I will say that he gets a little cute at the end, but that doesn’t detract from the excellent content.)
Link: Being No One on Youtube.
(Normally I think LWers dislike the talk format because it’s inherently time-consuming, but I’d say this one is information dense and well worth your time.)
For me the best quote came at 50:45: “You are a system that constantly confuses itself with the content of its own self-model.”
I’ve read the book Thomas Metzinger wrote with the same title, and agree it’s pretty nice.
Great lecture!
In answer to the question of “the immortality of the soul question”: ”. . . if it is true that the self is not a thing but a process, [...] then it is also true that the tragedy of the ego dissolves, because strictly speaking nobody is ever born and nobody ever dies”
Is he simply stating that the concept of a soul is flawed and therefore the question is inherently Wrong or did I misinterpret?
I didn’t get that part either. Why can’t all the hopes of immortality be attributed to the organism—which clearly does get born, and does die? Yes, this does aggravate some interpretive questions, but I don’t think Metzinger even wrestles with those questions, so in my view he isn’t entitled to presume an opposing answer.
As I understand it Dennett is by and large of the same camp as Metzinger, he describer a self as fictive aka narrative gravity, but he still seems to think the concept is worth keeping.
http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/How-do-Persons-Maintain-Their-Identity-Daniel-Dennett-/605
Maybe not the best like but the later 3⁄4 of the video is quite good.
Also see Self Models on Scholarpedia.