The Phenomenally Transparent Self-Model

Thomas Metzinger

Philosopher, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; author, The Ego Tunnel

A self-model is the inner representation that some information-processing systems have of themselves as a whole. A representation is phenomenally transparent if it (a) is conscious and (b) cannot be experienced as a representation. Therefore, transparent representations create the phenomenology of naïve realism—the robust and irrevocable sense that you are directly and immediately perceiving something that must be real. Now apply the second concept to the first: A transparent self-model necessarily creates the realistic conscious experience of selfhood—of being directly and immediately in touch with oneself as a whole.

This concept is important, because it shows how, in a certain class of information-processing systems, the robust phenomenology of being a self would inevitably appear—although these systems never were, or had, anything like a self. It is empirically plausible that we might just be such systems.