Let me stress beforehand that this particular “story so far” is just a personal one - a summation of the various mental thumb-twiddlings I’ve been doing since I’ve been at ILP. It’s not gospel or anything - [size=75](Hah - These days, not even gospel is gospel…)[/size]
Anyway - first things first… What’s the best question to ask…? “What is the self…?” Seems fairly obvious but…
Nope - that is best answered later, after we’ve found out why the self came to be. “Why did the self arise…?” Still not quite the right question. How about, “Why was the arisal of the self inevitable…?” or “Why did humans develop a self, to a greater degree than any other animal…?” Those questions I like.
There’s the easy answer of course: God did it. End of story.
But, moving swiftly past the big beardy guy in the sky, let’s have a go at answering it ourselves, shall we…? Oh, and btw - here’s a picture of the self:
I think this is a reasonable visual analogy:
*The self only thinks it is in complete control: “Hey Daddy, go left !!!” The self says to the body. And the body lumbers left. Just as I do, when my son does the same. But, and this is a very, very important but, I only go left if I know it is on my way, to whatever destination I’m going. ie: if I can encompass my son’s wishes into the general direction on which I’m set, then, and only then, do I agree.
*The self is a child compared to the body, specifically if compared with the hardwired subconscious, autonomic brain. A gazillion years of evolution has fine tuned the brain to survival, and yet, any particular itteration of a ‘self’ has at most only been awake for the classic three-score and ten or so. Even at the age of eighty, we are children. The body, exercizing its “Father knows best” organic logic, punishes us, with sadness and despair - Should we depart extensively from the path it dictates - for our own good, of course.
Anyway - Back to those questions. Why was the self inevitable…?
It is important to remember that a replicator is a chemical sequence that has only one fundamental trait: to copy itself. It knows, and can know… Absolutely nothing. Imagine a thousand paper boats floating on a river as it winds its way from the mountains to the sea, around rocks, over falls, across rapids. The boat that reached the sea first - if we had had a camera following it, and viewed the playback - we would see that the ‘winning’ boat, at each and every twist and turn and danger on its journey would seem to have made the ‘right’ decision, the ‘intelligent’ decision. But is still just a piece of paper. Replicators achieve what seems like ‘minded’ choice in hindsight, through simple brute numbers. Any one individual knows nothing. As long as ‘winning’ was possible - One of the boats was always bound to win. To win the race, all that needed to be done, was to build enough boats, enough designs.
So - Any DNA strand does not know a ‘good’ change from a ‘bad’ change. The qualities of good and bad are imposed only in hindsight, after an enviromental change contextualizes it as such. DNA is not alive, it is only an illusion at the point where natural laws and chemical properties co-incide over time that makes it seem to ‘change’ in an ‘intelligent’ fashion. What looks like reaction to changes in the enviroment, is really not reaction at all. It is a serrendipitous pre-emption. The actual ‘invention’ always comes before external forces make it suddenly a necessity. It is like a hula-girl in Hawai with a pair of snow-shoes in her closet… Just in case.
This ‘not knowing’ what could be a useful adaption in the future is the major stumbling block for our genes. Any lifeform that could develop a way to reliably predict the future, and adjust itself in a linear, purposeful manner to the conditions of that predicted future, would instantly become the most successful phenotype on the planet. The ability of prediciton was the holy-grail for our genes, though of course, they couldn’t know that.
A self-aware lifeform is the gene’s attempt to slip from the simple present tense into the future, by using the past. A self-aware lifeform looks not only through space, but also through time.
We, humans, are only one way of doing it. What we do individually, via conscious thought, interactive memory and manifest through behavioural change, bacteria also do through gestault diffuse ‘mind’, a distributed genetic ‘memory’ accessed via lateral transmission of plasmids - genetic information - and manifested through physical change.
But let’s stop there - 'cos bacteria are iccky.
“Why did humans develop a self, to a greater degree than any other animal…?”
Lotsa luck…? 
Nearly, but not quite - in no particular order…
Pack animal. We’re a pack. Me and my neighbor play a game with eachother - I borrow his lawnmower, he borrows my barbeque set. reciprocal ‘altruism’ - The most succesful none-zero sum game strategy for an indeterminate number of itterations is Grudger, or tit-for-tat (actually tit for two tats) - Formats of reciprocal altruism.
Grudger (tit-for-tat): Initially act altruisticaly toward strangers, but if they fail to repay the favour, remember their face and hold a grudge.
Tit-for-two-tats: Same as above, but this time, even if the stranger renegues on the deal once - you give him another chance.
Both of these strategies require memory. A memory that gets better as average pack size increases. Our packsize, according to Robin Dunbar’s extrapolation from brain-volume is around 150, the largest of all homids.
Memory is crucial to a ‘living self’ - it allows us to constantly update and patch our ‘selves’ should events and our reactions require it. Partial amnesiacs are ‘stuck’ their selves locked into the way they were upon that last remembered instant. Full amnesiacs are mechanisms, automatons, caricatures - no more alive than a production-line welding robot. [size=75](“The Emerging mind” V.Ramachandran)[/size]
Protein, Fire, Nomad-Biped, and being crap: Jungle ape to plains/seaside ape, whichever you prefer, I prefer both. Both favour biped apes - A higher vantage point to spot both prey and predator. Bipeds also swim better. Biped frees hands. Hands specialize for fine manipulation. Tool use. Tools enable ‘intelligence in their useage’ to become an adaptive evolutionary factor. Also a constantly changing habitat means physical specialization is not selected for, only intelligence/creativity as a multipurpose, jack of all trades solution. Tool specialization replaces genetic.
Fire. A switch to a protein diet be it meat or fish, is of little benefit nutritionally unless you have fire. Without fire to cook your dinner, the chewing time negates the higher calorie value. Our brains are so big they require a considerable portion of dietry energy to support them. Ancient firepit sites have been discovered amongst the remains of only one species. Us.
Being crap. We are crap at running. We have really crappy teeth. Compared with the current animal champion of any one particular natural ‘feat’ we absolutely stink. This is good.
*We do not grow long teeth - we make spears. Techno-teeth.
*We do not evolve 4 stomachs - we make a cooking pot. Techno-stomach.
*We do not grow really muscley legs - we evolve to be capable of co-operative behaviour that means we do not have to be faster than our prey. Socio-tech legs.
Always being crap in any particular habitat, always being physically way behind the more specialized, indigenous competition, means only one thing is selected for constantly in our evolutionary path. Intelligence.
Causality and Belief: We have an innate drive to find cause. Cause/effect strings (do this-that happens) favour technology/tool use. We have an innate need to believe, and form hard beliefs easily, even without strong evidence. For us - Explaination is to contemplation what orgasm is to screwing. Other homids have some capacity to string together cause and effect, but none to the degree even a child displays. [size=75](Six impossible things before breakfast - Lewis Wolpert)[/size]
Communication, language, syntax.: Okay, its fine to be able to say “Rock” or “Food” or “Constantinople” but not wildly useful for making a tool. You need stuff like tenses, and adjuncts of time: First, then, next etc. First you find a bit of wood so long, then you blah blah. Instructions are a kind of story. Spoken words are its medium - and the Broca’s area (inferior frontal gyrus, frontal lobes) - is it’s sequencer: putting the ‘before’ before the ‘after’.
Crucially - damage to the Brocal area not only effects the patient’s ability to form coherent sentences… But also to construct objects that require a sequence of action.
Words are the currency of thought. And thought is the warp and weft of the self.
The pack gave us memory. Standing up freed our hands. Free hands freed our minds. Hardship made us creative. Fire gave us the fuel to light a fire under our imaginations. A desire for cause gave us tools. Tools gave us words.
And words gave us ourselves.
“So Tab, that’s all very nice, but what the fuck is the self…?”
Ever noticed how infrequently you actually sit down and think ‘What am I…?’ I’m thinking now of my identity - what I am, what I’m not. And unless I really focus on a specific topic or event, the result is a cloudy mess - However I remain, for a reason I cannot quite fathom, quietly confident that I do actually know.
This to me smacks of self-deception. Belief without substance. A diminutive Wizard of Oz working levers in the darkness, a show of lights and loud noises, empty, meaning nothing.
To construct something of two parts - a stone-headed spear - you need to be able to visualize the two parts together before you put them together. You also need to formulate a reason to even bother. Improve flight. Increase weight. Improve lethality. To have such concepts linked to external objects you need a whole world and its physical laws ingrained within your head. You also need an agent. Someone to throw this mental spear.
An ‘I’.
An ‘I’ is so useful. He’s a fallguy. He’ll do stuff, crazy stuff, and won’t get hurt. He’ll work stuff out. Put things together. See the future through the eyes of the past. Discover the next big thing. But only if he can. Only if he’s allowed to. Only if he’s free.
Once an internalized representation of an agent, a self, evolves - it becomes self-reinforcing. The freer it is from hardwired behavioural restriction, the more useful it becomes. In order to derive benefit from a self, evolution must ‘trust’ it, alow it to at least believe it is free to do anything it can think of in response to any particular set of experienced variables.
The self is a puppet that believes it has no strings, believes it is at once the theatre, and the audience, and the puppeteer. The part that believes it is the whole.
Embarrassed by its nudity, its lowly beginnings, its bare cogs and chains, levers and pistons, the self quickly finds clothes, and puts on airs: “I”, it says. “I am this.” it says. “I am this and not that.”
Whenever we talk about ourselves, try to define ourselves to others, it is usually in verbs, or in the language of the body.
“I am 38.” It says: But it is not - the body is 38, parts of it at least. An old body can have the mind of a child. The self counts its years in experience, and the wisdom gained therefrom, not time.
“I am 6 foot tall.” It says: But it is not - the body has that dimension. The self is without dimension, living in the gap that bridges one fleeting perception and the next - this rate of change, this noticement of difference that we rationalize as time.
“I’m a keen tennis player.” It says - And yet it is the body, its autonomic systems, that guage trajectory and return the ball before the perceptory data of its flight has even reached the conscious, the seat of the self. The subconscious readies itself to move 2/3rds of a second before the self is aware of issuing a conscious order…
Try it for yourself, it’s awfully hard to make a statement about yourself that is completely defiant of your physicality.
“So - What does it do for us…?”
Prone to belief by nature: the first thing we believe in is ourselves. Even a nihilist will tentatively admit to the existance of something that thinks: ‘there is something that thinks’. One of the jobs the self does is to be the apologetic of our actions. After we have done, or experienced something that has disturbed or surprised us, the self will hurriedly try to form a (comforting/positive) narrative to fit that event into the ongoing theme of self:
For example: I get mugged, whilst currently subject to the belief ‘I am brave, strong and merciful’.
Scenario a) I find I wet myself, and tremblingly hand over my wallet.
[size=75]I am faced with incontravertable evidence that I am a coward. Unable to accept this, I tell myself that to risk serious injury for the contents of my wallet would be stupid - ergo I am clever. I slowly forget about the urniating on myself bit, or rationalize it as involuntary instinct, unassociated with my core self.[/size]
Scenario b) I find I go crazy, and almost beat my assailant to death with a dustbin lid, only coming to my senses something distracts me.
[size=75]I am faced with the suspicion I may be a psycho. I quickly rationalize that the other guy was a dangerous animal and I had to be sure I put him down for good, maybe he would have followed me etc… There was nothing else I could have done, anyone would have done the same. I wouldn’t actually of killed him. The rage was always under control - I was using my dark side…[/size]
We are that which must believe “I am a good person” by the benchmark of our own composite personal/social criteria of good, or acceptable behaviour/thought. The self constantly operates to supply the narrative means to support this assumption.
Confabulation -“The unconscious filling of gaps in one’s memory by fabrications that one accepts as facts.”
“Why Tab… Why…?”
Hi dear reader, do you know what you are…? You are a machine. You are an animal. You are a murderer, a rapist, a cheerful basher of baby’s heads - You just haven’t had sufficient cause so far, you are moral only by circumstance of luck. You will die. All your works upon this earth shall come to naught. There is no real difference between you and the lowliest, most despicable scumbag on the earth. You are just another dog.
So, how do you feel…? The above is all true btw, from a certain perspective. Don’t kid yourself.
Now - Answer the question.
jon.
So low, it was almost 
