Are you an invariant representation?

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20060414

Who am I? Am I my brain? Am I my spirit?

The brain is an information organ. It passes information "up" and "down" a hierarchy which is defined in our cerebral cortex. Patterns are recognized, decisions are made, and new patterns are learned in hierarchical levels above the current one. Lets call these pattern objects for now. Then at each level of the hierarchy, there are collections of pattern objects. It is the job of a pattern object in the current level to choose from the collection of pattern objects from the level below.

At the top level there are patterns which Jeff Hawkins refers to as invariant representations (as opposed to "auto-associative memory"). These are top-level pattern objects. At the top level, these objects have the advantage of input that has been refined as it was passed up the hierarchy.

What then is our sense of consciousness? If at each level there are only collections of pattern objects, then our "self" is either, as Jeff says, just the hum of the top-level hierarchy, or our "self" is like a single pattern object in a non-physical level one more up the hierarchy. In the first case, we can use our sense of consciousness to understand how a particular hierarchical level experiences the level below it. In the second case, it would be understanding how a particular pattern object (a cortical column) experiences the level below it.

My hunch is that the "we" that is "self" is a little of both. There are times we are "listening" to the various "voices" which guide our thoughts. But we are also able to asert a single, "self", an "I", that can take control and make top-level decisions that override all. ... or do we?

Is there an "I" which floats above ready to pass judgement? When we make a decision, is it the action of a "supreme judge" (a meta-parent) or is it simply the loudest voice (siblings) drowning out the others?

This is nearly a theological question, or at least a spiritual one. If our self is meerly the collection of siblings duking it out for the podium, then the existance of a "higher power" seems unlikely. If our self is (at least occasionally) the result of a meta-parent, then our self is like a pattern object (child) of a non-physical level above us.