[FRIAM] the self

[glen ☣]

OK.  This is better.  But you seem to have defined "unit" or "coherence", rather than "self" ... I'm reminded of Simon's "near decomposability" in The Sciences of the Artificial.  To promote a unit to a self, you're going to have to include some sort of loop, like propri- or inter-oception.  And that raises the idea that some (exteroception) variables are unbound.  If the "unit" has more unbound variables than bound ones and/or the loops see less weight/traffic than the unbound ones, then the "unit" isn't coherent ... not a unit.  By that reasoning, we should be able to parse the unit into parts whose excision does not (appreciatively) affect the unit versus parts whose excision fundamentally changes it, including destroying it.

I'd posit that a passable definition of "self" is the collection of parts that can't be excised without causing fundamental changes.  So, the loss of things like hair, fingernails, skin cells, maybe teeth, maybe 1 kidney, 1/2 a liver, etc. preserve the unit.

But even *that* definition is hopelessly flawed because it passes the buck to "fundamental changes".  Is myself invariant across the loss of a tooth?  What were we talking about?

On 08/07/2017 05:52 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I claim a message send is analogous to an axon firing, where there is at least one target neuron for each receivable message.   The whole graph and instantaneous charge state of the neurons and the musculature/skeleton/etc. attached to them is the `self'.  The edges and effective edges in the graph (apparently) come and go depending on experience.   In terms of comparing selves, I think one needs to look at the graphs in terms of the behaviors they exhibit and not their internal wiring.   My wiring of yellow can be different from yours.    Your perception of throwing a baseball will change with and without a broken arm, not just because the arm might not work, but also because the broken arm will lead to the motor system changing due to the lack of practice with throwing.
> 
> Probably there are subgraphs that are more stable configurations than others.

-- 
☣ glen