The Me-File: An Event-Coding Approach to Self-Representation.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2021 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.698778 via PubMed
Summary
People represent themselves using the same mechanisms they use to represent other individuals, events, and objects: by binding sensory codes from being oneself into a 'Me-File,' an event file integrating codes resulting from the behaving self. This is a Humean bundle-self theory of selfhood. Extensions of the Theory of Event Coding, a general theory of perception and action control, provide the mechanisms. The Me-File concept offers a basis for experimentation and for building artificial agents with human-like selves.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | People represent themselves by binding sensory consequence codes into a Me-File, an event file integrating codes from the behaving self. |
Abstract
Numerous authors have taken it for granted that people represent themselves or even have something like "a self", but the underlying mechanisms remain a mystery. How do people represent themselves? Here I propose that they do so not any differently from how they represent other individuals, events, and objects: by binding codes representing the sensory consequences of being oneself into a Me-File, that is, into an event file integrating all the codes resulting from the behaving me. This amounts to a Humean bundle-self theory of selfhood, and I will explain how recent extensions of the Theory of Event Coding, a general theory of human perception and action control, provide all the necessary ingredients for specifying the mechanisms underlying such a theory. The Me-File concept is likely to provide a useful mechanistic basis for more specific and more theoretically productive experimentation, as well as for the construction of artificial agents with human-like selves.