Goal-directed activity as core of Self

Source paper

extracted_from

(2022) · Levin, Michael

community

Relational self, care & aliveness
members_of
Self as dynamic functional center defined by care, coherence, and substrate-neutral cognition
Process-based non-essentialist selfhood
members_of
Self as dynamic, care-constituted process; reducing 'selfing' increases prosocial well-being.
Scale-free goal-directed agency
members_of
Frameworks treating selfhood as goal-pursuit capacity distributed across nested biological scales, from cellular to organismal levels.

framework

Tame Technological Approach To Mind Everywhere
implements
A conceptual framework for understanding cognition and intelligence across diverse substrates—including evolved biological systems, artificial systems, and bioengineered systems—using empirically-grounded, gradualist approaches. TTAME enables comparative analysis of mind-like phenomena regardless of the physical or biological substrate in which it emerges, facilitating cross-disciplinary study of unconventional intelligences.

concept

Collective Intelligence
extends
Recognition that selves are composite systems of competent parts; all intelligences are higher-level selves made of cells or components.

question

cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edge

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

Goal-Directed Activityconcept0.875
Central property of agency: energy expended to reach specific states despite disturbances.
The ability to pursue goals is the core of being a Self.claim0.830
Goal-directed activity is proposed as the central invariant for all Selves across substrates.
goal-directed behavioursconcept0.811
Behaviours that are anticipatory, flexible, and adaptive, contributing to the inference of cognition.
Goal-Directed Behaviorconcept0.807
Observable behavioral pattern used to infer cognition; shared by plants and animals and proposed as evidence for sentience.
Goal-Directednessconcept0.799
Proposed universal invariant of cognition and intelligence—capacity for goal-directed activity in a problem space, independent of substrate or embodiment.
Goal-Directedness in Cellular Systemsconcept0.789
The core of every living center is the self—this 'I'.claim0.767
An ontological claim that places the self as the essential nucleus of all living structure.
Kim et al. 2025: Emergence of goal-directed behaviors via active inference with self-prior (arXiv:2504.11075)concept0.759
Predecessor paper introducing the self-prior concept for goal-directed behavior emergence