The pattern theory of self in artificial general intelligence: A theoretical framework for modeling self in biologically inspired cognitive architectures

Body Schema in Autonomous Agents

“…LIDA integrates three levels of selfhood: the protoself, the minimal self, and the extended self (see Sec. 3.3) [Ramamurthy et al, 2012;Ryan et al, 2020]. The Current Body Schema is part of the protoself.…”

“…The self-concept is an aspect of the Extended Self. The self-concept, or selfplex [Blackmore, 2000], includes an agent's beliefs about themselves [Baars, 2019;Ramamurthy et al, 2012;Ryan et al, 2020]. There are also visual and imaginative aspects of the body image [Gallagher, 2005], and these are likely widely distributed across the kingdom Animalia, more so than semantic aspects.…”

Modeling Long-Term Intentions and Narratives in Autonomous Agents

“…Rather than arguing that the narrative self is the true self, we argue that what we call the self is the interplay between many dynamically interacting parts, or what Gallagher [2013] has called a 'pattern theory of the self.' The pattern theory of the self has previously been incorporated into the LIDA model, including the autobiographical self and the narrative self [Ryan et al, 2019]. The important point here is that several factors shape the way agents experience themselves as a self, from the constitution of our bodies, the structure of perception, the structure of our memory systems, to the cultural niches we live in.…”

“…For example, an agent might believe that it is a charming person, that it is healthy, or that it once went on a TV game show and won. The narrative self, on the other hand, explains why an agent did what they did [Ryan et al, 2019]. In other words, the narrative self is concerned with temporality and causality.…”

“…Furthermore, much research has shown that in human agents, autonomy, the self, and personal identity are intimately tied to a self-narrative. We humans continually create, update, and follow narratives about ourselves with which to make sense of the world and our own actions [Bruner, 1991[Bruner, , 2004Dings, 2019;Hutto, 2008;MacIntyre, 2013;Ryan et al, 2019;Schechtman, 1996Schechtman, , 2014. Our self-narratives and our intentions exist in a multicausal relationship to guide and structure our lives and our actions.…”