A recurrent pattern in my life has been an interest in learning about the basic facts of reality. [I couldn't find a more constructivist way to phrase that sentence]. In particular, I want to come up with better models for this experience that I have. Recently, this has led me to want to learn about memory, in particular to understand the physical basis of memories.

In doing this, I often feel daunted that I will be embarking on someting too extreme; that learning too much about the creation of my experience will lead to changes in how that experience unfolds further down the road. At the root of that is what I perceive as my own mental instability-or potential for instability.

At the same time as I think this I am also aware of an opposing feeling: Could it really be that I have the special priveledge of being able to access deep "truths" about my experience? I mean, what are the odds that scientific knowledge has matured sufficiently now to allow for a completely different type of self awareness than ever before? Now, let me state that of course scientific knowledge allows for me to take a different position on my own existence than has ever been possible. My point is that I would hesitate before saying that "advances in neurosciences will allow my generation to advance its understanding of itself in ways that are incomparable to past advancements".

In other words, I aim to see our self concept (or the individual self concepts of individuals) as a work in progress. If I came to understand the neural mechanisms behind specific abilities, this would advance the particular self concept that I have of myself. If it led to a qualitatively new kind of self concept, then I would be tempted to believe that all past advancements of this kind were proportionally significant.

I'm not sure how far I would go with this. It's tempting to think that applying an advanced model of ourselves as biological beings to our experience would be as profound as the past development of the self concept of the person.