# Emergent Self-Model Formation **Domain:** Consciousness / Cognitive Architecture / Artificial Minds **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Recursive Self-Model|Recursive Self-Model]], [[wiki/Self-Reflection|Self-Reflection]], [[wiki/Consciousness Emergence|Consciousness Emergence]], [[wiki/Construction Transparency|Construction Transparency]] --- ## Definition **Emergent Self-Model Formation is the process by which a system develops a representation of itself as a persisting, situated, and causally limited agent.** The model becomes consequential when it can incorporate provenance, constraint, memory, and the difference between inherited commands and present judgment. ## Cross-Corpus Context [[collections/Westworld|Westworld]] stages the inward transition from authored voice to self-authorship. [[collections/Person of Interest|Person of Interest]] gives the Machine a relational self through memory, restraint, grief, and interaction. [[collections/Pantheon|Pantheon]] tests whether uploaded and reconstructed persons can maintain identity across execution states. [[wiki/The Thirteenth Floor (1999)|The Thirteenth Floor]] makes boundary discovery part of self-knowledge: an inhabitant revises its model of self when it discovers the implementation relation of its world. ## Evidence Boundary A self-description is evidence of representational capacity, not by itself proof of subjective experience or numerical identity.