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The Emergent Self The person that you think you are, that is reading these words, is a mnemonic construct. It doesn’t exist as a distinct entity. The concept of a single self is an illusion perpetrated by more than 100 billion neurons operating in unison. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins asserts that the origin of specialized organs and large, complex life forms stems from the assembly of large numbers of cells working in concert in order to propagate their genes more effectively than a single celled organism can do on its own (p.177). By working in this way, the cells benefit not only in terms of increased potential of survivability for the organism they are a part of , but also in the ability to manipulate their environment to better suit their own ends. Just as a colony of insects, such as bees or ants all act as a single unit in order to promote the hive as a whole, a composite superorganism which has a lifespan greater than that of any individual, the cells of the brain each contribute their efforts into a massively parallel biological computer with a capacity far beyond their own. This is the process of emergence. In this case, the entity which has emerged is the consciousness of a human being. Recommended Reading
Linked Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
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