Self, world and time

Here is an interesting article entitled 'Extending Self-Consciousness Into The Future':
http://jbarresi.psychology.dal.ca/Papers/Barresi_chapter.htm

My point is that just as a conception of a self extended through time (unified over time) emerges at around 4 years of age, so does a conception of a world extending in time. The focus in most of this research is on what goes on 'in the mind'. My proposal is that what goes on 'in the mind' is mirrored in what goes on 'in the world'. Just as a 'unified consciousness' emerges, extended in time and space, so a 'unified world' emerges, extended in time and space. Just as the notion of one's own and other's 'representations' of reality emerges, so the very notion of an external reality - of 'the facts' - emerges. The inner and the outer co-emerge.

There are two forms of dualism. The mind-body one. But there is also one between 'reality' and 'mind' or 'inner' and 'outer'. We are tempted to assume that reality is a given and then talk about how the mind develops within it. My suggestion is that the two co-evolve. If human consciousness hadn't emerged, there would be no conception of a temporally extended real world with real objects and events; there would be no 'facts' to know. Cognitive abilities bring with them different realities, different possibilities for learning and exploring and acting. The conscious world uncovers a 'real world' - one that persists and acts independently of us, and which we can learn to know and control or simply reflect on and appreciate. Other creatures have no sense of this. They have no 'real world' they are in!

Here is a prediction based on this theory. The emergence of conceptions of a self extending through time (and the self as one of multiple perspectives which can also be extended in time) will be positively correlated with the emergence of conceptions of an enduring world - a home, a community, a neighbourhood, or perhaps even a cosmos with stars and a sun and moon - that extends in time and in which the child becomes aware he is located. I predict that around 4 years old the first questions concerning birth and death may arise, or at least the first conceptions of the origins and temporal trajectories of objects and individuals in the world. Here we will find the first conceptions that there is a world or cosmos, and other people, that exists independently of the self and within the context of which the self exists through time.