China Social Science Review

No.1, 2023

The Ecological Self and the Subjective Self from the Perspective of Predictive Mind

(Abstract)

Sun Qianqian

The self has multiple faces: the ecological self, the subject and object self of experience, and the narrative self. Yet the fact that they are collectively called “self” suggests that the many facets of the self may share a unified minimalist structure. Predictive mind is a recently emerging cognitive agenda that constructs a unifying computational principle for mental activities: the cognitive process is one of minimizing predictive error on the basis of generative models. Drawing on recent results in predictive mind, and in particular on the insights of Julian Kiverstein, this paper attempts to argue that the ecological self, as the initial self containing the minimal structure of the self, is realized through a model of the self that integrates the three elements of concern, body and action. Furthermore, the subjective self of experience (presented as the four phenomenal feelings of perspectivity, presence, possession and action) can be seen as a reflection of the cognitive mechanism based on the model of the self at the level of consciousness in the framework of the predictive mind.