The predictions of [§8.5.3](<8.5.3 What is Predicted.md>) receive convergent empirical support from neuroimaging, contemplative-tradition phenomenology, pharmacological intervention, comparative cognition, and developmental psychology. None of these literatures was developed in support of the present argument. Each reaches, on its own grounds, the result the framework predicts.

*Default mode network and reflexive identity.* The neuroimaging literature on the default mode network (DMN) confirms the prediction that deep reflexive identity has identifiable neural substrate (Buckner et al. 2008; Spreng and Grady 2010; Andrews-Hanna et al. 2014). The DMN — medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and temporoparietal junction — activates during self-referential thought, autobiographical memory retrieval, theory-of-mind tasks, and mind-wandering. It deactivates during external task focus. Lesion studies confirm that damage to DMN nodes produces specific deficits in self-narrative integration (Philippi et al. 2012). The structural prediction — that the recursion's reflexive turn on the I will have neural correlates implementing integration of self-modeling activity — is exactly what the DMN literature reports.

*Ego death under psychedelic intervention.* The most direct empirical confirmation of the self-as-construction prediction comes from psychedelic research. Psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and high-dose DMT acutely decrease DMN activity (Carhart-Harris et al. 2012; Pasquini et al. 2020; Tagliazucchi et al. 2016). Subjective reports converge: dissolution of the narrative self, loss of body ownership, ego death, sometimes followed by mystical experience and re-integration. Carhart-Harris and Friston's (2019) REBUS model formalizes the mechanism: psychedelics relax high-level priors, including the prior of being a unified self, while leaving lower-level sensory and predictive structure intact. Throughout, awareness continues; afterward, the self reassembles from the same organizational materials. Letheby's *Philosophy of Psychedelics* (2021) develops the philosophical implications: the self is a model the brain runs; psychedelics demonstrate this empirically by transiently taking the model offline.

The framework's prediction — self as recursive construction, dissolvable while the underlying recursion continues — receives precise empirical confirmation here.

*Contemplative phenomenology.* The Buddhist tradition centered on *anatta* (non-self) reaches the same conclusion through introspective method, two and a half millennia before contemporary neuroscience could approach the question. Advanced contemplatives describe states in which the narrative self thins out or dissolves, awareness continues, and reflexive structures vary in depth — sometimes including non-dual states without subject-object structure (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, and Davidson 2008; Wright 2017). Neuroimaging of long-term meditators confirms DMN modulation comparable to psychedelic effects, achieved through different mechanisms (Brewer et al. 2011; Garrison et al. 2015).

The convergence across pharmacological and contemplative pathways — different mechanisms, same phenomenology, same neural correlates — confirms that the self-model is implemented by specific recursive activity that can be modulated by multiple means.

*Predictive processing and self-modeling.* The predictive-processing framework reinforces the identity-as-construction claim. Friston's (2010) free energy principle, Clark's (2013) predictive processing, Hohwy's (2013) prediction-error-minimization, and Seth's (2021) interoceptive inference all model the self as the operational running of self-including predictive cycles. The Markov blanket formalism (Kirchhoff et al. 2018), a statistical boundary separating a system's internal states from its environment, gives the mathematical shape of the being that has a self-model of its environment. Damasio (1999) and Seth (2021) trace selfhood specifically to interoceptive predictive processing — the body's internal state included in the model. These results confirm the prediction that identity is the running of the self-modeling recursion, not an extra property layered on it.

*Substrate-independence in non-mammalian lineages.* The comparative-cognition literature confirms substrate-independence by demonstrating that integrative substrates implementing the same construction appear in different architectures. Corvid pallium implements depth comparable to mammalian cortex via different organization (Emery and Clayton 2004; Kabadayi and Osvath 2017). Cephalopods — distributed nervous system, no common ancestor with vertebrates for six hundred million years — display problem-solving, individual recognition of humans, apparent play, and chromatophore replay during sleep (Godfrey-Smith 2016). Elephants pass mirror tests via different brain architecture again (Plotnik, de Waal, and Reiss 2006). The structural recursion can be implemented in multiple ways; the construction is what counts.

*Parasitic mind control as biased-not-transferred identity.* The parasitology literature on behavior modification confirms the locus-of-identity prediction. *Toxoplasma gondii* alters rodent fear responses (Berdoy, Webster, and Macdonald 2000; Vyas et al. 2007); *Ophiocordyceps* drives ants to climb and lock onto vegetation (Hughes et al. 2011); hairworms drive crickets to drown themselves (Thomas et al. 2002); rabies alters mammalian behavior to promote transmission. In every documented case, the parasite alters the substrate on which the host's recursion runs without transferring the recursion. Two recursions remain. The host's vantage continues; its contents are biased. This matches what the framework predicts.

*Developmental and cross-cultural identity formation.* Developmental psychology confirms that identity emerges over years as the recursion's modeling capacity matures, tracking the maturation of integrative neural structure (Damon and Hart 1988). Cross-cultural work on independent versus interdependent self-construals (Markus and Kitayama 1991) confirms the relational dimension: what an I identifies itself with is loaded by the relational field the culture constructs, and the same recursive operation produces different I-contents in different fields.

DMN neuroimaging confirms reflexive identity has neural substrate. Psychedelic and contemplative research confirm the self-as-construction prediction. Predictive processing confirms identity as recursive running. Comparative-cognition lineages confirm substrate-independence. Parasitology confirms the locus-of-identity fact. Developmental and cross-cultural data confirm identity's relational dimension. Each methodology, working from its own vocabulary, identifies the same recursion.


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← [8.5.3 What is Predicted](<8.5.3 What is Predicted.md>) | [8.5.5 What is Concluded](<8.5.5 What is Concluded.md>) →
