The Analog “I” and the Metaphor “Me"

The Analog “I”

      A most important “feature” of this metaphor “world” is the metaphor we have of ourselves, the analog “I,” which can “move about” vicarially in our “imagination,” “doing” things that we are not actually doing. There are of course many uses for such an analog “I.” We imagine “ourselves” “doing” this or that, and thus “make” decisions on the basis of imagined “outcomes” that would be impossible if we did not have an imagined “self” behaving in an imagined “world.” In the example in the section on spatialization, it was not your physical behavioral self that was trying to “see” where my theory “fits” into the array of alternative theories. It was your analog “I.”
      If we are out walking, and two roads diverge in a wood, and we know that one of them comes back to our destination after a much more circuitous route, we can “traverse” that longer route with our analog “I” to see if its vistas and ponds are worth the longer time it will take. Without consciousness with its vicarial analog “I,” we could not do this.

The Metaphor “Me"

    The analog “I” is, however, not simply that. It is also a rnetaphor “rne.” As we imagine ourselves strolling down the longer path we indeed catch “glimpses” of “ourselves,” . . . . We can both look out from within the imagined self at the imagined vistas, or we can step back a bit and see ourselves perhaps kneeling down for a drink of water at a particular brook. There are of course quite profound problems here, particularly in the relationship of the “I” to the “me.” But that is another treatise. And I am only indicating the nature of the problem.