LAUSR

The topic of the self remains one of considerable controversy, and many arguments have been put forth suggesting the intuitive concept of self must be in some way mistaken - in part based on results in the cognitive and neural sciences. In this article I offer the alternative positive proposal that "the self" may indeed refer to a physical/computational system within the brain. To do this, I draw on empirical work regarding the neural basis of consciousness and decision-making, and on philosophical work regarding ecological control, unified group perspectives, and functional/mechanistic explanation. The work I review jointly supports the conclusion that a "core-circuit" of interacting cortical regions - the global workspace network - can be understood as a unified system for consciously perceiving and deciding, and thus fulfills many of the roles intuitively assigned to the self. I conclude that this self-concept need not be mistaken given current empirical knowledge.