The Homunculus Effect
	Is the Inner Self an Illusion?
	(Francis Steen; revised August 8, 1997)

Five kinds of self-knowledge (Neisser 1991)

• the ecological self: the self "as perceived with respect to the physical environment"
• the interpersonal self is "specified by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication"
• the extended self is "based primarily on our personal memories and anticipations"
• the private self "appears when children first notice that their experiences are not directly shared with other people"
• the conceptual self "draws its meaning from the network of assumptions and theories in which it is embedded"

• the ecological is inferred from sensations: "the existence of of perceiving entity at a particular location is most clearly specified by the optical flow field", including sensations of looming and streaming (389)
• episodic memories are formed of this field-events and objects from a specific series of points of view: "the information of episodic memory could be said to concern the self's experiences in subjective space and time" (Tulving, "What is Episodic Memory?" in Current Directions 2:67), permitting the inference of an observer following a trajectory
• on recall, episodic memories retain this sense of an ecological self: "The act of remembering a personally experienced event, that is, consciously recollecting it, is characterized by a distinctive, unique awareness of reexperiencing here and now something that happened before, at another time and in another place" (Tulving, p. 68)

• consciousness supports only a 2½D format of visual representation, but the visual system generates and stores a full 3D representation
• the neural circuits that are utilized for the distribution of visual imagery can take input both from the visual perception system and from memory (the circuits that mediate perceptual or presentational consciousness also mediate simulations or representational consciousness)
• simulations increase the quality or usefulness of collected information by utilizing aspects of the 3D representation that may not have been present in the original episodic memory
• this results in images viewed from novel perspectives-close-ups, bird's-eye views, and views devoid of perceptual obstacles
• rapid changes in perspective are permitted that are not possible in practice

• we have evolved specfic functional adaptations for making inferences about what kind of a creature we are on the basis of information from the optical flow field (the 'ecological self')
• if these inferences are applied to simulations, we derive notions of an inner self
• the inner self is defined by the perspective assumed by simulations; it is the observer that watches the simulated scenes
• since the perspective in simulations is often high above the ground, and is unencumbered by kinaesthetic cues, it cannot essentially belong to a body
• since perspective can be changed at will, the inner self is in control, and not subject to any obvious limitations
• since it is an observer and an agent, all inferences relevant to agents and minds apply to it
• the sensations of the body can be attributed to it

• The ecological self contains information about an actual agent
• Is there a real agent that perceives simulations?
• An agent with a history, a mind, interests, a future?
• A mental entity analogous to the whole person-a homunculus?

Hypothesis: No, this is an illusion, and it may in part be traced to a series of mistaken inferences made about the role of agent and observer in simulations. For a further discussion on this, see my "The Time of Unrememberable Being: Wordsworth's Autobiography of the Imagination" and Marcia Johnson on reality monitoring and the self.

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