A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self

•Self-representations (SRs) in the brain are distinct from their referents.•One type of concept-level SR humans possess is of a conscious, decision-making agent.•Skeptical arguments have suggested that this SR fails to refer to anything in the brain.•I argue that this SR instead successfully refers to the global workspace network.•This network acts as a unified system for consciously perceiving and deciding.

The topic of the self remains one of considerable controversy, and many arguments have been put forth suggesting the intuitive concept of self must be in some way mistaken - in part based on results in the cognitive and neural sciences. In this article I offer the alternative positive proposal that “the self” may indeed refer to a physical/computational system within the brain. To do this, I draw on empirical work regarding the neural basis of consciousness and decision-making, and on philosophical work regarding ecological control, unified group perspectives, and functional/mechanistic explanation. The work I review jointly supports the conclusion that a “core-circuit” of interacting cortical regions - the global workspace network - can be understood as a unified system for consciously perceiving and deciding, and thus fulfills many of the roles intuitively assigned to the self. I conclude that this self-concept need not be mistaken given current empirical knowledge.