How do you define a relative self?

[Xonas Pitfall]

To clarify, I'm talking about the relative self (lowercase self), not the total Self or total consciousness.

I feel like there's a lot of debate around questions such as: "Is a fetus conscious?" "Are animals conscious?" "Could AI develop consciousness? If not through electronic hardware, what about AI built using organoids or biological neurons (wetware)?", "When does a baby or child become conscious?" "When was the first time you felt your relative self or ego forming?"

When would you say a relative self, ego, or sense of "I" forms, and why/how?

Is it dependent on specific areas of the human brain, or is it more about higher-order complexity, information processing, and the capacity for self-reflection?

For example, let's say you could connect a fly's brain to a second brain that significantly increases its processing power, memory, and capacity for self-reflection. Would the fly then develop a sense of "I"? Would it become self-aware in a way it wasn't before?

How would you even create, define, or measure that?

I'd be really curious to hear people's thoughts on this! 

[integral]

AI is a P-zombie. 

It's behaviorally identical to a human but completely lacks phenomenal experience.

A calculator does not experience 2+2 = 4 when you hit enter.

I suspect human experience is the brain drawing all of its senses onto a screen And it uses tricks of memory to create continuity, object permanence and time. 

Quote

For example, let's say you could connect a fly's brain to a second brain that significantly increases its processing power, memory, and capacity for self-reflection. Would the fly then develop a sense of "I"? Would it become self-aware in a way it wasn't before?

The fly is experiencing something. Self awareness is not necessary for experience.

Edited Friday at 11:20 PM by integral

[cetus]

On 11/6/2026 at 5:56 PM, Xonas Pitfall said:

When would you say a relative self, ego, or sense of "I" forms, and why/how?

You could write a book on that one. 

But I will say, of course, it doesn't form overnight.

Why? Self-preservation. Survival. Natural instinct.

Edited 8 hours ago by cetus

[kavaris]

The relative is the total self. Thats why the paradox is possible, thats why everything feels this way of like, a rise in some more complex. We are communicating, tlkin, tryina conjure up wtf this is, and we are mistaking complexity of nature w/ The Self (Period... or wat weve imagined it to be....) Alas, that is what gives it a sense of like "Why is life like this, why am i the thing looking out at the thing", Like... That is itself *what it is*. Its a freaky self thing. The fact that we interact w/ things comes w/ perception as the main thing, and not "a primary self, a secondary nature, etc, etc" Like its all just Self, period. The complexity happens within the self. Nature is just what Complexity w/ a /C/ happens to be lookin like right now.

Edited yesterday at 03:09 AM by kavaris

[kavaris]

Quote

How would you even create, define...

Exactly. Id say dont try it, as youd be imaginging *what measuring is* and then predicating the nature of everything on the ability to measure and receive results. Like, its a world of reimagining is all, and thats the question id go to first for practicality, like "what is it then to imagine" typeve things. Or just "What is imagination", not that its the best place to jump off from, but its the best least best least or whatever.

Edited yesterday at 03:20 AM by kavaris

[Carl-Richard]

Meta-awareness is the ability to self-reflect on experience. This happens around 3 years old in humans. You'll notice that this is often where your first memories are from. It's the first time you have gathered a coherent sense of locus of autobiographical memory that you can start to self-reflect on it (i.e. recall it and say to yourself "this is indeed this thing" implicitly).

Sentience seems to arise before reflecting on it. You didn't start feeling your ass only when you focused on it and said "I'm indeed experiencing sitting on my ass right now". You just focused on it and re-represented it. Meta-awareness is a re-representing of contents in sentience. And the core of sentience seems to be about representing the boundaries of our bodily vehicle.

We may extrapolate the primacy of sentience of our experience as illustrated above evolutionarily, in that we evolutionarily started to feel things before re-representing them. And where do we draw that "boundary"? Perhaps at the existence of bodily boundaries. And if you look at the evolution (and ontogenesis) of multicellular life, it all starts at a single cell dividing. So where does the boundary of inside vs outside start to be defined? Perhaps the boundary of the cell membrane.

And as the organism grows into a multicelluar one, perhaps at the bodily boundaries of that organism. Because the cells grow out from each other and work together in a coordinated organic fashion. And they all act to maintain the same bodily boundary. In fact, it might even be more accurate to think of it as a single cell differentiating itself "inwards", rather than multiple cells growing outwards. You can even see this visually when a cell is diving in an animal embryo. Although it becomes murky for some earlier forms of multicellular life where the cooperation between cells is less coordinated.

Also, some colony lifeforms, e.g. slime molds, fuse individual cells (dissolving the cell membrane and keeping the nuclei) into a single big cell and operate in a coordinate unit. You could imagine that the individual selves dissolved/sacrificed themselves and became a part of a larger whole.

Edited 10 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Salvijus]

You are what you value. 

What has no value for you will not register as a loss when it's gone. What has value for you will feel like a part of you is lost when it's gone. 

As you value only the truth, you are the truth only. With the beginning of idolatry is the beginning of ego. Idolatry is the ego in fact. 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Salvijus

[Leo Gura]

The relative self is a very different thing from Consciousness itself. You can know the relative self and you will still not know if a computer can become conscious.

The relative self is any finite image you have of what you are. If you picture yourself to be a human creature, that's the relative self.

Edited 11 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Joseph Maynor]

I prefer finite self.  

[Inliytened1]

On 11/6/2026 at 4:56 PM, Xonas Pitfall said:

To clarify, I'm talking about the relative self (lowercase self), not the total Self or total consciousness.

I feel like there's a lot of debate around questions such as: "Is a fetus conscious?" "Are animals conscious?" "Could AI develop consciousness? If not through electronic hardware, what about AI built using organoids or biological neurons (wetware)?", "When does a baby or child become conscious?" "When was the first time you felt your relative self or ego forming?"

When would you say a relative self, ego, or sense of "I" forms, and why/how?

Is it dependent on specific areas of the human brain, or is it more about higher-order complexity, information processing, and the capacity for self-reflection?

For example, let's say you could connect a fly's brain to a second brain that significantly increases its processing power, memory, and capacity for self-reflection. Would the fly then develop a sense of "I"? Would it become self-aware in a way it wasn't before?

How would you even create, define, or measure that?

I'd be really curious to hear people's thoughts on this! 

It's just Consciousness. This body is an illusion. As is the self. So that you could exist here. With..well, with other. But all of it is a fantasy.  You are God.  

[Inliytened1]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The relative self is a very different thing from Consciousness itself. You can know the relative self and you will still not know if a computer can become conscious.

The relative self is any finite image you have of what you are. If you picture yourself to be a human creature, that's the relative self.

Oh fuck. Imagine that.  What we hold as ourselves.  Is literally all there is.

Edited 9 hours ago by Inliytened1

[kavaris]

You know, lookin' back in my notebooks from amany years ago (though, its not like i had that many notebooks that have withstood the test of time...)

... but its like, one of them has this series of pages, each beginning "...and the subsequent paradox..." As i could not escape the incessant realization of the big ole bogging down of this paradox thing (whatever may have been on my mind at the time) and, as its pertaining to the fundamental ways i was processing... engaging w/ internal and external, thoughts, feelings, emotions, et caetera, et caetera...

And because of that, that notebook is really afflictive in nature, torturous to read and get through. Like. Even when it seems to resolve towards the end.. it just feels like, even beginning every thought with "Paradox" feels like theres a glitch. Regardless of the subject matter, that philosophical side of life is always a kind of liquid ink available, to which i try to enjoy & dipinto,  messing around with the painting of such things that i am to perceive or realize.

Its like "Can i write without the word paradox coming up every page, ruining the work?"

Like, it ruined that notebook of mine (or atleast, i feel it did, based on what i think the subject matter was to have been). Like its not that the paradox invoking is a bad thing necessarily, per say, but the repetitive reminder of it is prolly bad, to me, and towards what im trying to do. It ceases to mean what it means when its another fledgling spinner ~ spinning out of control; Another cascade of emotion that you've found yourself stuck in...  Alas, this is sortve why i even would write in the first place, and yet not many people openly are burdened by it, i dont think? Or maybe not this one specifically.

So in trying to write about the relative self, that is a constant reminder that im always making note of, and then regretting that i even acknowledged it.

Edited 7 hours ago by kavaris

[Inliytened1]

2 hours ago, kavaris said:

You know, lookin' back in my notebooks from amany years ago (though, its not like i had that many notebooks that have withstood the test of time...)

... but its like, one of them has this series of pages, each beginning "...and the subsequent paradox..." As i could not escape the incessant realization of the big ole bogging down of this paradox thing (whatever may have been on my mind at the time) and, as its pertaining to the fundamental ways i was processing... engaging w/ internal and external, thoughts, feelings, emotions, et caetera, et caetera...

And because of that, that notebook is really afflictive in nature, torturous to read and get through. Like. Even when it seems to resolve towards the end.. it just feels like, even beginning every thought with "Paradox" feels like theres a glitch. Regardless of the subject matter, that philosophical side of life is always a kind of liquid ink available, to which i try to enjoy & dipinto,  messing around with the painting of such things that i am to perceive or realize.

Its like "Can i write without the word paradox coming up every page, ruining the work?"

Like, it ruined that notebook of mine (or atleast, i feel it did, based on what i think the subject matter was to have been). Like its not that the paradox invoking is a bad thing necessarily, per say, but the repetitive reminder of it is prolly bad, to me, and towards what im trying to do. It ceases to mean what it means when its another fledgling spinner ~ spinning out of control; Another cascade of emotion that you've found yourself stuck in...  Alas, this is sortve why i even would write in the first place, and yet not many people openly are burdened by it, i dont think? Or maybe not this one specifically.

So in trying to write about the relative self, that is a constant reminder that im always making note of, and then regretting that i even acknowledged it.

Let Leo awaken you. Look at what he said.

[AION]

Relative self is the one you can observe versus the observer. 

[kavaris]

3 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Let Leo awaken you. Look at what he said.

Thx. And, No no. i hear ya, i me, i appreciate that truly. Its like...

Iuno. I dont wanna spoil anything, like... Im the hidden thing that i myself cant reveal, like... Iuno.

[Joseph Maynor]

I don't like relative because it means everyone is the same.  There is a sense in which we are all the same, but not in every respect.  

Edited 22 minutes ago by Joseph Maynor