The Holographic Self: A Predictive Processing Account of Consciousness as Symbolic Construction

The self is not an entity but a process—a dynamic, holographic symbol generated by the brain's predictive machinery. Drawing on evidence from the rubber hand illusion, full-body illusions, split-brain studies, somatoparaphrenia, and episodic memory, this paper argues that the experience of a unified, persistent self is a construction rather than a discovery. The framework integrates predictive processing models with philosophical arguments for eliminativism about the self, synthesizing Dennett's user-illusion theory, Metzinger's phenomenal self-model, Friston's free energy principle, and Hoffman's interface theory of perception. The self-model is described as a hierarchically organized predictive representation that serves adaptive functions while remaining ontologically empty.

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Abstract

The subjective experience of a unified, persistent self is among the most fundamental features of human consciousness, yet neuroscientific and philosophical inquiry increasingly suggests that this experience is a construction rather than a discovery. This paper advances a unified theoretical framework integrating predictive processing models of brain function with philosophical arguments for the eliminativist view of the self. Drawing on empirical evidence from the rubber hand illusion, full-body illusion experiments, split-brain studies, somatoparaphrenia, and the phenomenology of episodic memory, I argue that the self is not an entity but a process-a dynamic, holographic symbol generated by the brain's predictive machinery. Consciousness, on this view, is the continuous generation of symbolic representations that refer only to other symbols, never to a non-symbolic reality. The paper synthesizes contributions from Dennett's user-illusion theory, Metzinger's phenomenal self-model, Friston's free energy principle, and Hoffman's interface theory of perception. I propose that the self-model is a hierarchically organized predictive representation that serves adaptive behavioral functions while remaining ontologically empty. The implications of this framework for understanding suffering, agency, and collective phenomena are briefly considered. This work contributes to the growing interdisciplinary literature on the constructed nature of selfhood and offers a coherent theoretical basis for clinical and philosophical applications.