Let's Read: The Ego Tunnel (Part 3)

Chapter 4: From Ownership to Agency to Free Will

Review

In chapter 3, Metzinger used OBE and other disruptions to self-consciousness to sketch out a 3-part model of consciousness:

• Physical body model. This is a model of the physical body, with joints, bones, meat, weight, velocity, shape, etc. It is put into a model of the physical world, and it cannot occupy the same volume as other solids. So for example, the arm of the body cannot sink into the desk.
• Astral body model. This model has the same shape as the physical body model. However, it has no weight, is not affected by gravity, has no organs, and though it has a volume, it cannot exclude anything else from the volume (it's like turning off collision in a game). It is basically a ghost in the shell of the physical body model. It is usually a bit smaller than the physical body model.
• Viewpoint model. A point in space augmented with a Cartesian frame, to represent the orientation of your viewpoint. It represents your "true location". It is perched between the eyes of the astral body model, facing straight forward. 
  It is used to model where the sound you are hearing is coming from. So for example, if you hear a noise on the left, that would be modeled as a sound source to the left of the viewpoint. 
  It is also used to model where what you are seeing is. So for example, if you see a ball straight ahead, that is modelled as a ball straight ahead of the viewpoint.
  Note that even in a blind-deaf person, there is still a viewpoint model. It is simply not used to assist in inference of audio and visual input. Even a blind-deaf person must feel like they are somewhere in spacetime. That "somewhere" is the location of the viewpoint model within the world model.

Metzinger further contends that to create a thing that feels, it is necessary and sufficient to make a "minimal phenomenal selfhood". A minimal phenomenal selfhood is made of these parts:

• A model of spacetime.
• A point in the spacetime model, indicating "here I am".
• A model of the body (usually humanoid) centered around the viewpoint.
• A global workspace, that is, a buffer memory unit like the RAM. 

And to augment a minimal phenomenal selfhood into a minimal subject, it is necessary and sufficient to add:

• A self-attention control module. The three components of the minimal phenomenal selfhood should appear in the global workspace, and the self-attention control module's function is to emphasize/deemphasize parts of the self-body-model into focus in the global workspace.

This whole system for making a minimal subject is called a phenomenal self-model. It is reasonably easy to construct even with today's technology. It is probable that the self-driving cars in 5 years will have phenomenal self-models.

Let's Read: The Ego Tunnel (Part 2)

Chapter 3: Body Image, Out-of-Body Experiences, and the Virtual Self

This Chapter is fairly easy. It studies some disruptions of human self-consciousness and explain their meaning. The disruptions include OBE (Out-of-Body Experiences), autoscopy, heautoscopy, rubber-hand illusion, full-body rubber-hand illusion, phantom limbs.

Let's get the conclusion first:

You are never in direct contact with your own body. What you feel in the rubber-hand illusion, what AZ feels, or what Philip feels when his left arm is “plugged in” is exactly the same as what you feel when you attend to the sensation of your hands holding this book right now or to the feeling of pressure and resistance when you lean back in your chair. What you experience is not reality but virtual reality, a possibility. Strictly speaking, and on the level of conscious experience alone, you live your life in a virtual body and not in a real one.

Yes, everything we experience is virtual. We never experience reality directly, but only the brain simulation.

So what is the self in this simulation? The self is a complex construction of several parts, all of which usually stays together, but might come apart. The components are:

• Model of the physical body: the arms, the legs, the joint-angles, the head...
• Model of the inside of the physical body (interoceptive self): temperature, fullness, heartrate...
• Model of the viewpoint: a "camera" in the model of the world. It is usually sitting between the eyes of the physical body model, but it can move around.
• Others.

Metzinger wants to get to the bottom of things: find the "minimal phenomenal selfhood", the bare essentials for making a self.

We know more: A seeing self also is not necessary. You can shut the windows in front of the little man behind your eyes by closing your eyelids. The seeing self disappears; the Ego remains. You can be a robust, conscious self even if you are emotionally flat, if you do not engage in acts of will, and also in the absence of thought. Emotions, will, and thoughts are not necessary to the fundamental sense of selfhood. Every meditator (remember chapter 1) can confirm that you may settle into a calm, emotionally neutral state, deeply relaxed and widely alert, a state of pure observation, without any thought, while a certain elementary form of bodily self-consciousness remains. Let us call this “selfhood-as-embodiment.”

Minimal self-consciousness is not control, but what makes control possible.