Self-as-Object

Canonical definition

Self-as-Object is the Individual as an Object in their own Decision Hub: the target toward which their own valuation and action-readiness are generated. It is the reflexive counterpart of Individual-as-Object, which is the Individual as an Object of other Individuals' valuation, and the two are architecturally distinct rather than two aspects of one relation. Self-as-Object has an action limb and a valuation limb. On the action limb, the Individual's own body or a condition of it is the Object an action corrects or maintains, and the correction requires no third thing to be pursued through. On the valuation limb, the Individual's own conduct, capacities and standing are assessed by their own Ground-Resolution, the self having entered the perceived Object field through the Reafference Pathway, which returns executed action to the Observer stripped of the source-identity information that would mark it as the Individual's own. Self-as-Object valuation decomposes through the same A, I and Mimetic Premium components as any other Object-valuation, and its Mimetic Premium component is computed against a reference point drawn from the relational field rather than generated within the Individual. Four consequences follow from reflexivity, each the counterpart of a result Individual-as-Object carries. - No Mimetic Premium transfer, and therefore no extraction. Net Mimetic Position is the differential between the Mimetic Premium two parties assign one another, and Self-as-Object has one party. No differential exists, so no extraction occurs at any magnitude of self-valuation. Self-regard is not a transaction and cannot become one. - Not a member of Status, though not without effect on it. Status is constituted entirely within other Individuals' valuation architectures, so a Self-as-Object valuation is not itself a member of that aggregate whatever its magnitude: an Individual cannot raise their own Status by valuing themselves, which is the reflexive statement of the non-purchasability result the Reciprocal Valuation Property establishes. What reaches Status is the behaviour the valuation produces. Self-as-Object valuation issues in conduct, conduct is observed, and observers value the Individual-as-Object partly on what that conduct displays, so an Individual who carries themselves as though their own valuation of themselves were high is valued differently from one whose conduct displays self-loathing. The route is the ordinary one by which Status is influenced rather than constituted, the same route through which held Objects and installed occupancies move it: the Individual supplies a signal, and the signal moves Status only so far as observers freely update on it, and by whatever the field in question makes of it. Nothing in this returns self-valuation to the aggregate, and nothing in it makes the Individual a party to the Mimetic Premium transfer their display may provoke. The Individual settles what is displayed. The field settles what it is worth. - It loads the intrapersonal coupling loop. What Self-as-Object valuation reaches directly is the Self-Model, written through the Belief Register and recirculated by the memory-recall self-coupling loop. The characteristic pathologies of self-regard are accordingly convergence pathologies, the Bayesian Flywheel carrying the Self-Model toward a Fixed Point that reflects the circulation rather than the Individual, and not the extraction pathologies that attach to the reciprocal case. - It sets the baseline the comparative computation runs against. Status is comparative, so a reading of another Individual's standing is a reading of a position relative to a reference level, and the reference level is the Individual's own believed standing. The formal treatment carries this in its sign convention: the dyadic estimate places the assessor above the target or the target above the assessor, and its cost limb, the expected resistance, retaliation and opportunity cost of dealing, can only be computed from where the assessor takes themselves to stand. Self-as-Object is therefore upstream of the comparative computation as well as downstream of it, and the Self-Standing Confirmation Principle states what follows when the baseline is mis-set. Distinction from Individual-as-Object. The two terms name the same Individual under two different relations and must not be substituted for one another. Individual-as-Object is reciprocal: the Object is a second valuing subject, running the same architecture, assigning valuations back. That reciprocity is what generates Entanglement, differential extraction, the non-purchasability of Status, and the self-reinforcement of Status-PM, and it is what the Reciprocal Valuation Property identifies as distinguishing Individual-as-Object from every other Object-type. Self-as-Object is reflexive: there is one valuing subject, which is also the Object. Nothing is assigned back because there is no second party to assign it, and none of the four reciprocal consequences arises. A sentence about how an Individual is valued by the field concerns Individual-as-Object; a sentence about how an Individual values themselves concerns Self-as-Object. Where an Individual's own action returns to them through the responses of others, both relations are in play and the sentence should say so, the return path passing through second parties and being reciprocal at that limb.