I’m writing a paper right now titled “The Self as a System of Systems Processes” for the International Conference on Complex Systems held by necsi.org in Boston at the beginning of October.

I’m trying to do it in eight pages so that it can make the published proceedings. I’m putting together a power point outline and then linking with the shortest transition sentences possible. Whew.

The abstract has been submitted and the paper and poster presentation accepted. Yes!

Here’s the abstract:

Subjective human experience is explored by psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, spiritual teachings, evolutionary biology, and more. Consciousness, cognition, and emotion are approached differently by researchers from different disciplines making interpretations of findings and communications among disciplines difficult. Reframing the self or subjective experience as a system of processes provides a model for integrating concepts and findings from various disciplines, for defining and potentially measuring what may be considered abstract and illusive, and for generating new hypotheses and models. This paper adapts Banathy’s three lenses for developing a systems view of any system and applies it to the self. The system-environment lens outlines hierarchical processes of the self and human systems, boundaries and boundary conditions, and the capacity to adapt and coevolve. The function-structure lens describes components, functions, and regulatory processes of the self within human systems. The development lens compares hierarchical levels of development and reframes them as processes and systems types. This model results in simple, functional, and measurable descriptions for  (1) the experience of self as three components: an innate “wisdom” (subconscious capacity to process masses of information), cognition, shifting awareness or consciousness; (2) ethics and emotions as regulatory “guidance systems;” (3) a process definition of mental health; and (4) the self as an developing and coevolving system emergent from neurophysiological systems and embedded in human systems.

Yesterday Laura Civitello and I had breakfast and she asked, “What is emergence?” Laura has an excellent vocabulary but she has noticed that the concept’s been floating around in some new way.

I showed her this:

Emergence is what happens when the whole forms up from the parts.

A whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You can’t describe water by looking at hydrogen or a forest by looking only at a tree.

A big question in neuroscience is the “binding problem.” We know that different parts of the brain are concerned with depth perception, color, memory about cars, etc. How does the brain put it all together?

Walter Freeman studies whole brain activity using EEG leads on mats on people’s heads. Using nonlinear mathematics, he shows how “attractor basins” of form up (emerge), break down into chaos, and form up again. The entire brain shifts from “frame” to “frame” on the order of tenths of seconds.

While accomplished neuroscientists (including Francis Crick of DNA fame who recently passed away) argue that consciousness can be explained by tracking down the neurons, Freeman says that it’s like trying to describe a hurricane by looking at a molecule (I greatly paraphrased).

Neurons, tissues, and the whole brain are being studied but we are having difficulty with the next level: The level of conscious experience. The emergent level of the self.

We are accustomed to looking at ourselves psychologically, philosophically, spiritually, physiologically, socially, politically, etc. A holistic approach attempts to look at the self from all the directions. It’s still looking at the parts.

I describe the self differently. I look at the self as a system of processes. I ask different questions. I get different answers. The answers make sense. It’s more in sync with who we are. It works.

I’m so excited about it that I have to express it.

More later.