Emma Madden

the self is a locally generated, dynamically evolving state produced through the refraction of social and environmental information through an individual’s internal transformation architecture. the relevant social environment is a multiplex network consisting of relations such as family, peers, institutions, media, culture, and others, which provide partially overlapping streams of information. individuals transform inputs according to a history-dependent parameters (biological, cognitive, perceptual, affective, cultural, etc.). identity is a local phenomenon, an emergent product of the interaction between network neighborhood and transformation architecture. the interesting scientific object becomes the transformation function–what are the parameters? how are they between individuals? how do those parameters themselves change through experience?