Damasio's Architecture of Selfhood: A Network-Integration Account

Abstract

This paper proposes that the Damasian hierarchy tracks a structural property of the underlying neural architecture — the degree to which a layer’s function depends on integration across distributed networks, as opposed to localized or reflexive processing. Stated explicitly, this converts a descriptive clinical taxonomy into a framework yielding specific, falsifiable predictions. The paper addresses the standing objection from autonoetic consciousness (Klein), arguing that amnesic patients who retain identity without episodic memory isolate the active ingredient of the autobiographical self — integrative capacity, not episodic content. It states three falsifiable predictions concerning the order of functional recovery under pharmacological perturbation, and identifies the boundary conditions under which the framework would fail, including its explicit silence on the hard problem of consciousness. The argument is developed as a structural claim independent of any particular physical mechanism. A candidate energetic account of why distributed integration should be more fragile than localized processing is under separate development and is cited, not presupposed, h