How about the following model for what is going on.
A human is an RL agent with a complicated reward function, and one of the terms in this reward function requires (internally) generating an explanation for the agent’s behavior. You can think of it as a transparency technique. The evolutionary reason for this is that other people can ask you to explain your behavior (for example, to make sure they can trust you) and generating the explanation on demand would be too slow (or outright impossible if you don’t remember the relevant facts), so you need to do it continuously. Like often with evolution, an instrumental (from the perspective of reproductive fitness) goal has been transformed into a terminal (from the perspective of the evolved mind) goal.
The criteria for what comprises a valid explanation are at least to some extent learned (we can speculate that the learning begins when parents ask children to explain their behavior, or suggest their own explanations). We can think of the explanation as a “proof” and the culture as determining the “system of axioms”. Moreover, the resulting relationship between the actual behavior and explanation is two way: on the one hand, if you behaved in a certain way, then the explanation needs to reflect it, on the other hand, if you already generated some explanation, then your future behavior should be consistent with it. This might be the primary mechanism by which the culture’s notions about morality are “installed” into the individual’s preferences: you need to (internally) explain your behavior in a way consistent with the prevailing norms, therefore you need to actually not stray too far from those norms.
The thing we call “self” or “consciousness” is not the agent, is not even a subroutine inside the agent, it is the explanation. This is because any time someone describes eir internal experiences, ey are actually describing this “innate narrative”: after all, this is exactly its original function.
The thing we call “self” or “consciousness” is not the agent, is not even a subroutine inside the agent, it is the explanation. This is because any time someone describes eir internal experiences, ey are actually describing this “innate narrative”: after all, this is exactly its original function.
Yes. Rephrasing it slightly, anything that we observe in the global workspace is an output from some subsystem; it is not the subsystem itself. Likewise, the sense of a self is a narrative produced by some subsystem. This narrative is then treated as an ontologically basic entity, the agent which actually does things, because the subsystems that do the self-modeling can only see the things that appear in consciousness. Whatever level is the lowest that you can observe, is the one whose behavior you need to take as an axiom; and if conscious experience is the lowest level that you can observe, then you take the narrative as something whose independent existence has to be assumed.
(Now I wonder about that self-representational blink associated with the experience of the self. Could it be that the same system which produces the narrative of the self also takes that narrative as input—and that the blink obscures it from noticing that it is generating the very same story which it is basing its inferences on? “I see a self taking actions, so therefore the best explanation must be that there is a self which is taking actions?”)
This would also explain Julian Jaynes’s seemingly-crazy theory that ancient people experienced their gods as auditory hallucinations. If society tells you that some of the thoughts that you hear in your head come from gods, then maybe your narrative of the self just comes to assign those thoughts as coming from gods.
This would also explain Julian Jaynes’s seemingly-crazy theory that ancient people experienced their gods as auditory hallucinations. If society tells you that some of the thoughts that you hear in your head come from gods, then maybe your narrative of the self just comes to assign those thoughts as coming from gods.
This fits my theory that psychological unhealth can largely be improved by releasing insecurities social stuff. Cf Adlerian Psychology and The Courage to be Disliked.
How about the following model for what is going on.
A human is an RL agent with a complicated reward function, and one of the terms in this reward function requires (internally) generating an explanation for the agent’s behavior. You can think of it as a transparency technique. The evolutionary reason for this is that other people can ask you to explain your behavior (for example, to make sure they can trust you) and generating the explanation on demand would be too slow (or outright impossible if you don’t remember the relevant facts), so you need to do it continuously. Like often with evolution, an instrumental (from the perspective of reproductive fitness) goal has been transformed into a terminal (from the perspective of the evolved mind) goal.
The criteria for what comprises a valid explanation are at least to some extent learned (we can speculate that the learning begins when parents ask children to explain their behavior, or suggest their own explanations). We can think of the explanation as a “proof” and the culture as determining the “system of axioms”. Moreover, the resulting relationship between the actual behavior and explanation is two way: on the one hand, if you behaved in a certain way, then the explanation needs to reflect it, on the other hand, if you already generated some explanation, then your future behavior should be consistent with it. This might be the primary mechanism by which the culture’s notions about morality are “installed” into the individual’s preferences: you need to (internally) explain your behavior in a way consistent with the prevailing norms, therefore you need to actually not stray too far from those norms.
The thing we call “self” or “consciousness” is not the agent, is not even a subroutine inside the agent, it is the explanation. This is because any time someone describes eir internal experiences, ey are actually describing this “innate narrative”: after all, this is exactly its original function.
This makes sense to me; would also be compatible with the model of craving as a specifically socially evolved motivational layer.
Yes. Rephrasing it slightly, anything that we observe in the global workspace is an output from some subsystem; it is not the subsystem itself. Likewise, the sense of a self is a narrative produced by some subsystem. This narrative is then treated as an ontologically basic entity, the agent which actually does things, because the subsystems that do the self-modeling can only see the things that appear in consciousness. Whatever level is the lowest that you can observe, is the one whose behavior you need to take as an axiom; and if conscious experience is the lowest level that you can observe, then you take the narrative as something whose independent existence has to be assumed.
(Now I wonder about that self-representational blink associated with the experience of the self. Could it be that the same system which produces the narrative of the self also takes that narrative as input—and that the blink obscures it from noticing that it is generating the very same story which it is basing its inferences on? “I see a self taking actions, so therefore the best explanation must be that there is a self which is taking actions?”)
This would also explain Julian Jaynes’s seemingly-crazy theory that ancient people experienced their gods as auditory hallucinations. If society tells you that some of the thoughts that you hear in your head come from gods, then maybe your narrative of the self just comes to assign those thoughts as coming from gods.
Speak of the devil.
This is a neat conceptualization.
This fits my theory that psychological unhealth can largely be improved by releasing insecurities social stuff. Cf Adlerian Psychology and The Courage to be Disliked.