# 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. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "From this point of view therefore, as long as I understand the material explanation of a machine's behavior, I will argue that it doesn't think." > **— Emanuel Derman**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Identity/Explaining a Machine’s Behavior Does Not Prove It Thinks by Emanuel Derman|Explaining a Machine’s Behavior Does Not Prove It Thinks by Emanuel Derman]] > "What do I think about machines that think? Well, of course it depends on who that person is." > **— Robert Sapolsky**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/It Depends on Who the Thinking Machine Is by Robert Sapolsky|It Depends on Who the Thinking Machine Is by Robert Sapolsky]] > "Machines (humanly constructed artifacts) cannot think because no machine has a point of view; that is, a unique perspective on the worldly referents of its internal symbolic logic." > **— Arnold Trehub**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Identity/Machines Cannot Think Without a Point of View by Arnold Trehub|Machines Cannot Think Without a Point of View by Arnold Trehub]] > "The universe consists primarily of dark matter. We can't see it, but it has an enormous gravitational force. The conscious mind—much like the visible aspect of the universe—is only a small fraction of the mental world. The dark matter of the mind, the unconscious, has the greatest psychic gravity. Disregard the dark matter of the universe and anomalies appear. Ignore the dark matter of the mind and our irrationality is inexplicable." > **— Joel Gold**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/The Unconscious Has the Greatest Psychic Gravity by Joel Gold|The Unconscious Has the Greatest Psychic Gravity by Joel Gold]] > "A self-model is the inner representation some information-processing systems have of themselves as a whole. A representation is phenomenally transparent, if it a) is conscious and b) cannot be experienced as a representation. Therefore, transparent representations create the phenomenology of naïve realism, the robust and irrevocable sense that you are directly and immediately perceiving something which must be real. Now apply the second concept to the first: A "transparent self-model", necessarily, creates the realistic conscious experience of selfhood, of being directly and immediately in touch with oneself as a whole." > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Self May Be a Transparent Model by Thomas Metzinger|The Self May Be a Transparent Model by Thomas Metzinger]] > "Virtualization has the important intellectual side-effect of leading us towards a better understanding of the relation between emergent properties & virtual machines or systems. Thus "I" am an emergent property of my body & mind; "I" (my subjective experience of the world & myself) am a virtual machine, of sorts; but "I" (or "consciousness") am just as real (despite being virtual) as the pull-down menu built of software — or the picture that emerges from the pixels. Like industrialization, virtualization is an intellectual as well as a technological & economic transition; like industrialization, it's a change in the texture of time." > **— David Gelernter**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Simulation/The Self May Be a Virtual Machine by David Gelernter|The Self May Be a Virtual Machine by David Gelernter]] ## Relationships - **Edge Annual Question source relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] preserves the annual-question source corpus from which a proposition-specific quotation is connected to this entry.