A widely endorsed distinction that has proven to be fruitful across distinct fields is that between the minimal and the narrative self (Gallagher, 2000). On the one hand, I show that the minimal and the narrative self should each be seen as hierarchically structured. On the other hand, I argue that rather than being hierarchically organized in terms of the timescale of its encoded regularities, the hierarchy within the narrative self-model can also be captured in terms of the “stubbornness” of its priors and hyperpriors. The parameters of the narrative self-model are differentially weighted in terms of their precision or inferred reliability (Araya, 2023, 2024; Araya et al., 2024). That is, the narrative self-model can be understood as a Lakatosian model, which is constituted by a highly weighted “hard core” and a less weighted “protective belt”. This idea serves to shed some light on various phenomena, such as self-control, grief, and schizophrenia, among others.

References

Araya, J. M. (2023). Grief as self-model updating. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s11097- 023- 09945-8
Araya, J. M. (2024). Emotion against reason? Self-Control Conflict as Self-Modelling Rivalry. Synthese, 204, 16. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s11229- 024- 04672-2
Araya, J.M., López-Silva, P. & Rosen, C. (2024). The narrative self-model in schizophrenia: integrating predictive processing with phenomenological psychopathology. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-024-10032-9