Why the best way to understand the self is to build a robot one
Aeon••general
Key Points:
- The human self is a dual phenomenon, consisting of the "Me" (the self as object) and the "I" (the self as subject), involving both awareness of oneself and the content perceived, rooted in our embodied existence.
- Neuroscientific and psychological research shows that the self emerges from brain networks integrating body ownership, agency, memory, and social cognition, with a "minimal self" present from infancy and a more complex, narrative self developing through language and culture.
- Synthetic approaches using robotics aim to recreate aspects of the self by enabling robots with physical bodies, sensory inputs, and motor capabilities to develop self/other distinctions, body ownership, agency, and even rudimentary episodic memory, providing insights into human selfhood
