Is there such a thing as the self?

Teleportation and LSD trips could help us understand the nature of personal identity

by Jim Holt / June 23, 2014 / Leave a comment

Published in July 2014 issue of Prospect Magazine

“Once your brain is vaporised, the lights go out for good. Even an exact physical duplicate of your body and brain would not be you—although it would certainly believe it was.”

Self
by Barry Dainton (Penguin, £8.99)

Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of the Self
by Jennifer Ouellette (Penguin US, £9.99)

Most of us, when we look in the mirror, have a sense that behind the eyes looking back at us is a me-ish thing: a self. But this, we are increasingly told, is an illusion. Why? Well, according to neuroscientists, there is no single place in the brain that generates a self. According to psychologists, there is no little commander-in-chief in our heads directing our behaviour. According to philosophers, there is no “Cartesian ego” unifying our consciousness, no unchanging core of identity that makes us the same person from day to day; there is only an ever-shifting bundle of thoughts, feelings and memories.

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Comments

michael morgan
June 27, 2014 at 06:48
Will the last neuroscientist to leave please switch off the light before disappearing up his or her own ass!
harderwijk
June 27, 2014 at 12:09
I know it’s summer in the north. The solstice has been and gone, six days hence. And the living is easy. So, reading here between the lines, as one is bound, I am struck by the distinct impression that getting a fix on locating “such a thing as the self” is about as urgent to Mr Holt as perhaps it is for him to contemplate going to Mars. Any time soon. It’s a non-question, of course. Equivalent to enquiring into the precise length of a nondescript ‘piece of string’. Pure sophistry. Akin to asking for the best way to get into ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Or ‘freedom’. Define ‘sweetness’. We do it all the time. Talk about ‘faith’, as one might discuss an infectious disease. All the time. And as we do, we indulge our culturally acquired, socially upheld habit of treating all those familiar words as descriptive of something, an autonomous entity, that is conveniently assumed to exist quite independent of what we say. Meanwhile, we know all along and very well that ‘the self’ is a term that belongs to metaphysics, not anatomy or biology. Everybody knows where America is. But nobody has ever been there. Or Europe. We know how to use the words, so we are happy to believe, as we did as children, that the words stand for something concrete, something tangible, a core element of that quintessential illusion, we call ‘reality’. In the vain belief that this topic has some relevance to our experience, I’d like to propose a theory. It may well be that every child develops a sense of ‘self’ merely by dint of having been persuaded to say “I”. As in, “I don’t like green eggs and ham”. And once the child has mastered saying “I”, the ‘other’, that is to say, persons outside ‘my’ interior estate where “I” can be “me”, is designated as “you”. The child is now well on its way, as are we all, to construct its own reality. Peopled with “I” and “you”. The only two moral agents available, in ‘the whole wide world’. Part of being human seems to be that we are obliged to believe language describes a given, empirical reality. We have no choice but to believe this, because that is what it feels like. We talk, we write, we read, it all makes sense … That’s the reality. Which in turn enables us to ‘make believe’ we can know “The Truth”. After all, our ability to make sense of the data our sensory receptors are sending to our brain has enabled us to get where we find ourselves today. Except that we also know it’s not really quite like that. Nevertheless, we are all happy to believe language describes reality. We talk about living and dead languages. But we also know that lifeless objects, like a shovel or egg beater, do no work. It’s always only “you” and “I”. We use language like we use any other tool, to make sense. But the sense we make, while useful (it’s what got our magnificent and pitiable species all the way to here), is not necessarily the whole story. It certainly feels, as we speak, read and write, very like we are all competently and confidently describing what we like to refer to as “the material world around us”. It feels like … so we call it … “common sense”. But our “common sense reality” can also, just as reasonably, be understood as a wonderfully complex ‘working model’. A useful hypothesis, as it were, that is more or less guaranteed to get us through the day, without too much conflict of interest, differences of private opinion or outrageous assaults on our precious perceptions of civilisation, public decency, democracy, freedom of expression and, that all-time favourite, “consensual consensus”. We need to be right and we need everyone to agree on what’s right. Notice that the ever-popular, hackneyed expression, “I love you”, is always ‘effortlessly’ translated and understood as, “you love me”. I say “effortlessly” because that is what it feels like. Most of what we say conveniently ignores the detail. Our brain is really working very hard, all the time, to make sense of ‘the world as we know it’. Constantly verifying the endless stream of sensory data flooding in, plus keeping tabs on blood chemistry and all the other bodily functions. All that mental data crunching costs a lot of energy (sugar + oxygen). The possessive case and gender of the pronoun “my” is automatically adjusted. How does that happen? When we first learn to speak we have no idea that there are discrete persons, or positions of speech, inherent in the language we use to make sense of our material world. Initially a child has difficulty articulating what it wants and feels. Very young children begin by referring to themselves in the third person. “Billy (Sally) come too?” Only later do we learn that there are no more than three discrete positions of speech available in the English language. One script, three singular characters. The first person “I” (incorporating the plural “we”) is the person speaking. That is the position we must all inhabit, or mobilise, in order to say anything at all, to express an opinion or feeling. Notice, that we always enunciate the plural collective pronoun “we” as though we are referring to a unified coherent entity. We don’t even notice that this purely discursively constructed, rhetorical device called “we” is automatically invested with a single, collective consciousness. As in, “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” No matter what our status or education, we all fluently operate these wholly contrived linguistic constructs without even thinking about it. The second person “you” (singular and plural) is the person addressed or spoken to. In order to say anything at all we must adopt the role of, or enunciate, the “I” position. The speaker cannot occupy the “you” position. But whenever “I” am addressed as “you” my brain, once again without my being aware of it, automatically translates every “you” as “hey, that’s me! I’m being spoken to”. That is, “you”, when uttered, can only ever be ‘the other’, the person spoken to. But, when perceived, in speech or written text, “you” is automatically understood as “I” or “me”. Finally, the third person, enunciated as “s/he, his or her, they or their” is the person spoken about. The third person, like the first and second, is also always treated as a singular, moral entity endowed with a single consciousness. One other interesting variation here is the generic first person “one”, as commonly used in French and German. In English this affected figure of speech is more commonly associated with royalty, as in, “one is not amused”. In common parlance it becomes, “you”, as in, “you wouldn’t believe it”, or, “you’d be crazy to even consider it”. A further convenient and popular conceit imposed by the inescapable imperatives of a common language is to express personal observations in terms of “we”, as in “we see”, “we know”, as I repeatedly do here. Like it or not, this use of the first person plural pronoun inevitably conveys the impression that the first person singular “I” can speak on behalf of a unified, coherent and like-minded assembly or totemic tribe. Just another instance of the rules of language imposing the advantage of constructing an imaginary collective consciousness. These three singular persons are the only positions of speech, or “enunciative modalities”, available in English. From a very early age, we had no alternative but to intuitively acquire the ability to activate or mobilise these three persons as one might operate marionettes in a regular puppet show. The script is virtually unlimited. But each narrative, such as, “I love you, she wants him, but they don’t like me”, has only three singular characters. Equipped only with our prodigious memory and vivid imagination, we construct the reality that enables us to negotiate fast-moving traffic on the freeway, understand “what it says” on the label, to engage in highly complex social intercourse and raise children. And we do all that without really knowing how. Besides, what is it “to know”? Very like believing, we have no choice but to believe that what we claim to know is all there is to it. We need to believe we know the facts. We persuade ourselves of that remarkable conceit by allowing for our extraordinary ability to blithely ignore everything we simply cannot possibly know and to automatically fill in, without ever consciously thinking about it, the often glaringly obvious gaps in our knowledge with every ready-made assumption, cliché, superstition, incidental baseless conjecture and innuendo in the book. There is a credible case to be made for the notion that making sense of ‘the real world’ has more to do with recollecting the words with which to inform our thinking, than t’other way. We seem to ‘make sense’ primarily by articulating a learned vocabulary retrieved from our individual memory in close correlation with our imagination. This human facility could only be derived from the unique circumstances surrounding our birth, upbringing, education and life experience. While each personal database is therefore necessarily uniquely individual, we are nevertheless all obliged to use a highly structured language as, or what is commonly referred to as, a suitable means of “communication”. With the confounding consequence of that imperative being that language cannot clarify – all words mystify. The public perception of “consensus”, such as within “the scientific community”, only works so long as those who agree to identify themselves with such a ‘consensus’ are conveniently prepared to ignore the details. But it never feels like that. If we abandon for a moment the fond notion that language serves to describe, more or less precisely, an alleged extra-linguistic ‘reality’, we find that our choice of words utterly depends on the universal blithe assumption that – if what we think we meant [past tense] by what we said is to have any hope of being understood [made sense of] – the ordinary norms and conventions of spelling, grammar and syntax, to which those words must rigorously conform, are all held in common. What we like to call “human communication” may feel so efficient and familiar, for no better reason than that we take the alleged “exchange of information and ideas” happily for granted. Largely due, perhaps, to our genetically determined propensity, similar to our well-documented interpretation of animal behaviour and in the interests of self-preservation and “world peace”, for ignoring the detail. Which is why, I believe, we are so bitterly disappointed and deeply offended, whenever we are misunderstood. Given that each of us is possessed of a highly efficient brain, that equips us with a vast reference library, or “memory”, and an endlessly astonishing imagination with which to “make sense” of all incoming data, we mistakenly assume that “what I see must be what you understand”. And yet, we cannot deny that each of us has come from and passed through a unique, life-long experiential learning process. So, we cannot escape the realisation that no two people can ever hope to interpret the same data in precisely the same way. Therefore, language simply cannot serve to describe a common reality. The best we can do is to exchange appropriate noises and semantic symbols and hope ‘the other’ will be able to interpret those primitive signals as something resembling what we now believe, with the benefit of hindsight, having uttered our intelligent, thoughtful, well-reasoned and eloquent string of words, we actually meant to say. Not before. The surprisingly narrow limitations of any language, determines what we can say and what we cannot, thus prescribing what we get when we “make sense”. It may be argued, therefore, that the sense of ‘self’, ‘self-consciousness’, or “the soul”, may be nothing more mysterious than the inevitable consequence of learning in infancy how and when to articulate the linguistic construction of the first person pronoun, “I”. I believe this enables us to conclude that “God” and, for that matter, everything else we talk about, cannot exist unless and until we have a word for it. We can make a clear distinction between what we habitually call “tangible” and “intangible” realities, only because language provides the vocabulary with which to do so. We define these distinctions, as we do everything else we talk about, by creating them with words. I believe I am only able to speak about “physical artefacts” in “the material world”, such as “my dog” and “my car”, as tangible realities. Not because I associate my experience of touch with the appropriate words, which is certainly what it feels like. But because my acquired ability to mobilise those words, and nothing else, makes the experience real. The existence of a thing, such as ‘the self’, is not defined by whether it is tangible or intangible. Therefore, all things, material or ephemeral, are there because we have learned to use the words to call them into existence. Therefore, notwithstanding what it feels like, we do not describe our experiences of the “tangible world” with labels inscribed with the words we have learned. We create the entire box and dice, by mobilising the vocabulary of the language we could not help but gradually, imperceptibly and intuitively acquire. And, because the vocabulary, while vast, is pitifully limited, as we so often hear it said, “words fail us”, we are eventually obliged to admit that we can never know enough. As Donald Rumsfeld almost famously said, we can know what we don’t know. But we should never forget there are many more things we do not yet realise we don’t know.
Alyson
June 27, 2014 at 13:08
For the clearest and simplest explanation of the self and the Self - the duality of experience and consciousness - look to yoga. The experiences of our lives we 're-member' in our somatic identity. The narrative is 're-called' in our verbal explaining to ourselves. The consciousness that powers it all is something neutral... Artificial Intelligence is at its earliest developmental stages.
Kathy Armistead
June 27, 2014 at 13:41
Perhaps the authors should read Harry Stack Sullivan if they believe what they completely propose is new. See Sullivan's concept of the self system (1953).
Lucien Aychenwald
June 27, 2014 at 16:01
I don't know whether to call it parochialism or willful ignorance, but this article, and apparently the books it refers to, fail to mention that the question of the self (or Self) has been at the core of Indian thought for at least three thousand years. Furthermore, Indian thinkers from the Buddha to Nagarjuna to Shankara have elaborated very pertinent -- and to my mind unexcelled -- responses to it. Tibetan thinkers like Rabchen Longchenpa should also be cited. (Although Buddhists and Vedantans may appear to be in opposition on this issue, it could be argued that their positions are in fact complementary once problems of terminology and approach have been adequately resolved.) These are thinkers of incomparable sophistication, and ignorance of them is really intellectual laziness of a very serious order. Modern philosophers and scientists -- especially those of a materialist bent -- may criticize Descartes, but they are just as thoroughly caught up in metaphysics as he was. Put another way, Westerners are descendants of Plato, whether we realize it or not, and we need to understand Plato's response to Heraclitus and Parmenides (arguably the first "Western" non-dualists) to really come to grips with the issue. Talking about neurons, synapses, and cortices may certainly be useful in mapping thought patterns in a relative sense -- for the brain is obviously crucial to human consciousness, and any changes to it naturally result in changes to an individual's experience -- but it is still *downstream* of where the Asian thinkers and so-called "pre-Socratics" were working. Heraclitus and Parmenides only left us fragments, but the Vedanta and Mahayana/Vajrayana Buddhist canons are vast and very detailed on all the problems that arise from this question - especially the language that ensnares us from the outset. They are as subtle and sophisticated as anything humans have ever thought -- but they do not lend themselves to sound-bites. One has to do the work.
Arnold Trehub
June 27, 2014 at 16:38
For evidence that the core self is a real biological part of the human brain see "Where Am I ? Redux", here: http://theassc.org/documents/where_am_i_redux
Al_de_Baran
June 27, 2014 at 17:12
re. harderwijk: It is remarkably indulgent of Prospect to allow a comment that appears to be as long as the article on which it comments. Anyway, "And, because the vocabulary, while vast, is pitifully limited, as we so often hear it said, 'words fail us'". When you have mastered the 750,000 - 1,000,000 or so words that the English language is reputed to contain (or whatever number your native language happens to contain), then you might consider making such a statement. Until then,, it is better not to confuse your own limitations with those of language.
Saksin
June 27, 2014 at 18:49
"according to neuroscientists, there is no single place in the brain that generates a self" sounds as if there were consensus among neuroscientists about such matters. Most of them do not even concern themselves with these kinds of issues, and for those who do there is no unanimity, to judge by what they publish on it. Here is one, for example, who seems to disagree: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3738861/pdf/fpsyg-04-00501.pdf
erik
June 27, 2014 at 21:13
Semantics. Yawn.
Ramesh Raghuvanshi
June 28, 2014 at 05:18
Soul is nothing more than our unconscious mind,which governed on our conscious mind up to end of our life.Philosopher Spinoza rightly wrote long ago "Men believe themselves to be free,simply because they are conscious of their actions,and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined" Resent research in neuroscience conferred statement of Spinoza.Idea of soul arise in all religious texts in ancient times because men were ignorant at that time..When so much research done in neuroscience it is futile to discuss on soul in 21 Th century
1. A.Sriskandarajah
  July 1, 2016 at 18:14
  Idea of soul arise in all religious texts in ancient times because men were ignorant at that time..When so much research done in neuroscience it is futile to discuss on soul in 21 Th century Reply Why Neuroscientists are still unable to understand what is consciousness and how it arises from the material brain if so much of research done in Neuroscience in 21th century? Why do the 21th century intelligent people go and see the things such as pyramids, Chinese great wall, Tajmahal etc with excitement which were made by the ancient people and treat those things as great wonders.? If they were ignorant how could they built those wonderful things?
John
June 28, 2014 at 10:36
We are most fundamentally the ones God knows and loves, and our selves stretch out toward God and are kept by God in love rather than existing independently like some hidden object. There are many other apparent selves that show up, and sometimes we believe and act as if we are those selves, but God knows us better than we know ourselves, and is closer to us than we are to ourselves. This God is not a being but is the creative source of all being, and so is even less scientifically discoverable than the self. We are able to experience only the events that are the effect of this God. This way of thinking does not, however, behave especially well in relation to the scientistic strictures within which most contemporary thought circles.
pdq
June 28, 2014 at 17:12
You can't find self in the common-sense world of language and others; it is a private solipsism. The self is supposedly found through meditation. And when you do find it, forget about communicating anything much about it, since communication of course belongs to the common-sense world of others and language. In sum: you're on your own.
Serge
June 28, 2014 at 21:59
Any such attempt to define the self as an object fails, as it loses what is essential, namely, the subject, the irreducible first-person consciousness. At best, one might say that the self is the "I" which holds the contents of the mind, is somehow related to the body. Even this attempt falls into an objectification.
Serge
June 28, 2014 at 22:06
The possibility of immaterial souls is curtly dismissed as a belief of the "benighted". This ad hominem is hardly a convincing argument. Materialism is itself a presupposition, and has thus far failed to account for the subjective, that is, for consciousness. An immaterial soul is as believable a hypothesis as mind being a feature of matter, a version of panpsychism.
Ted Schrey Montreal
June 29, 2014 at 22:44
I distinguish beween self and ego. And I also differentiate between experience and rational reflection. All of this I mix together and rarely fail to end up being confused. I call this daily life. I quite like this arrangement. Of course, I am used to it. You may envy me.
Carl
June 30, 2014 at 09:33
"For Derek Parfit, who presented this thought experiment in his 1984 book Reasons and Persons, this type of teleportation is a survivable process." That's wrong. Parfit says you would not survive teleportation: the replica teleportation creates would not be you. But he concludes that what teleportation preserves nevertheless makes it as good as survival, and that you have no reason to reject it in favor of a much longer trip by spaceship.
cameron
July 1, 2014 at 14:21
note to self - you don't need to write me notes for i am the one that writes them.
Terrence O'Keeffe
July 1, 2014 at 16:22
Getting back to Harderwijk’s last elegant – and digressive, though that is the essayist’s privilege, and H has written an essay here -- response to an article about the “self”, I would like to point out where he (she?) has possibly made a serious misjudgment right at the outset of his comments. There is no doubt that along a spectrum of definitions of what the self is or how it might be apprehended, there is a metaphysical position at one end of that spectrum – the self as “soul”, next to which might be “innermost character”, etc., moving along to the “inferred self” (inferred by others, who are always contributing to one’s conception of oneself) which is based on the record of one’s actions (deeds, behavior, possibly including verbal behavior). It’s interesting that many religious conceptions of the immortal soul (usually viewed as an ethereal or “spiritual” substance) also allow it to experience pleasure and pain (or even require to in the interest of “fairness”). That seems like a shaky position grounded in moral imperatives (i.e., social rules). And, while it is clear that believing the self has an anatomical counterpart or core would be silly, it’s not so clear that the self cannot be given a biological or social-psychological definition that “makes sense of the data”. If illustrations (“proof’) of the fact that an organism can distinguish itself from both the environment in which it dwells and from other organisms exist, then the case is strong for a naturally-occurring “sense of self”, rather than that sense being derived purely from language-use. Even an amnesiac doesn’t walk into doors or forget how to ride a bike (“learned motor memory”) when he or she has forgotten significant things about his or her personal history (as kept in memory). And, to people who know the amnesiac, his or her self continues to exist, though it is now considered to be “defective” or “impaired” or any other word you choose that fits the bill. The old Freudian idea that an infant suddenly discovers that he or she is not identical with his or her mother presents the self as a mental construction tied to a standard phase of an organism’s development, when it mentally creates a self. In this picture, the foetus had an “identity” that was totally merged with that of its mother, but that identity is transformed through birth and early experience. There is no known way of actually engaging this idea scientifically, so perhaps it should be understood metaphorically, and leave it at that. Biologically, of course, the foetus is distinct from its mother, just as it is socially. In the general discussion (not just H’s) there appears to be too full an identification between the self and one’s consciousness. While there may never be a satisfactory definition or explanation of consciousness, there is also no reason to restrict it to “self-consciousness”, while it would be fair to say that it deals with (thinks about) a very broad stream of mixed currents (the reality around us) in which the self plays a minor role, albeit, to the self, a very important role (the illusion of one’s centrality in the big scheme of things, not a very defensible position). Also, the idea of the self as “unique” is probably true according to any definition we give it that rests upon the memories and learned routines of any organism that does have its very own history, yet it appears to be a trivial or inconsequential truth. By this I mean that, “statistically speaking”, all these unique selves (within a species) strongly resemble each other and have numerous important features in common – from many points of view yourself and myself are interchangeable. If this is true (it’s arguable), then the linguistic factors which H has introduced into the argument (the opacity of language with regard to both the speaker’s and the listener’s intentions, or “meanings”) are not terribly important, because the purpose and use of much language bypasses this issue as somehow irrelevant (and may be correct in doing so). Just a few thoughts for the morning.
Withaak
July 1, 2014 at 20:40
Oh Hardewiijk, so bitter your lucid lake and poetic, resenting the necessity in language and elsewhere, if there is one, to reduce the complexity of experience into reasonable sounding phrases which combined have some beginning, middle and end thus resorting to a lyric rendition which ends up sounding a little looney but actually encapsulated very much the contention here inasmuch as said (sung) lyric awakens the possibility that the problem of the self is made problematic by too narrow a focus ignoring the possibilty that the self while existing, certainly, does so in a medium , a many layered complex, in which it is possible to see the self as disappearing as does the forest amongst trees or the building in the office. In other words from a molecular (chlorine or otherwise) standpoint the self is an incomprehensible form of organisation, a field emergent in another dimension, as it were. Just as from a broader view, say the social, the self is much diminished and unfortunately all too often loses resolution altogether becoming an individual who is really only a statistical average and has no real incidence. O' Keefe's gripe and some of the other more humourless reactions to your ebulience seem to miss this. So, yes, O'Keefe is correct in that in an everyday situation language in communication is adequate as a medium for meaning, even ignoring the plethora of non-linguistic cues but in many ways it is also quite inadequate. Witness the number of times it is necessary to repeat oneself or just to make do with a bare minimum of effective communication. As the master said to the acollyte who wanted to know what it was like to have transcended, if you need to ask then you surely would not understand. Awareness is the key in meaning and knowledge is awareness. As to the self and pronouns perhaps one has to resort to a Lacanian position where the self is only accessible through language (thus the situation where we have difficulty recalling our pre-linguistic selves although there remains an affective implicit awareness of experience then which can be inferred from behaviour later on; often labelled pathological, neurotic and so on.) so the I as subject is a sufficently sustaining phantasy adequate mostly to the everyday. But language amongst other convenient fictions breaks down upon close scrutiny and the I recedes with the complexity resolving as a bundle of cognitive-affective-embodied reflexes and cliches narcisisticly bent on asserting itself as reality defining. That's what comment sections are there for,I guess!
Terrence O'Keeffe
July 2, 2014 at 15:22
The argument (discussion?) is endless. Ideas of the self appear to have gotten too entangled with ideas about consciousness in general, to the detriment of the vessel of both, the organism (or the body which contains a mind). And linguistic deconstructions of self and of consciousness remove us farther from the body. So let’s take a look at what implications normal “I, me, etc.” usage might have if we re-examine them with the organism in mind. “Give it to me, please. I’m going to eat it.” Lots of referentiality to the outside world there – something which can be given and received, something which can be eaten (and, socially, a giver and a receiver). But, I, me, the self, and consciousness.? Do we think the “inner self” or consciousness gives and receives things, or eats them? It’s a strange way of putting it, and an equally strange way of thinking it. Well, the organism (an individual and discrete entity, though much of it is socially constructed and socially mediated, including its language) can and does give, receive, and eat. So if you reflect on I/me as a token (symbol) of introspective self-consciousness (whether spurious or real), you can also see it as referring to the organism (the usage is efficient and multipurpose). On the other hand, the response, “I’m sorry, I can’t give it to you,” seems to refer more to the inner self than to the organism (because it involves ideas like personal intention, judgment, etc.). Does this make things clearer? Probably not, but it has the virtue of jumping over a too-restrictive boundary in the minds of many of the discussants (i.e., life as consciousness and vice-versa).
Barry
July 3, 2014 at 06:01
This is an interesting and at times amusing discussion. However, I wonder about the sense of self and the sense of temporality. A good friend has had a terrible encounter with cancer lately. While recovering from an operation the like of which I shudder to think about and chemotherapy she experienced periods of bliss that sound just like the writings of mystics. Just looking at a flower was enough for her, or looking at the dog lying in the sun contentedly. I rang her the day after she spoke with the physician to discuss her prognosis and it was a good a bill of health as could be given to her. She had thought that she might not make it through, but she now knows that she can expect many years of life. I asked her about the transcendental joy that she had been experiencing and she said that it stopped with the prognosis. That is, with no future, imprisoned in “now”, there was bliss. With a future there isn’t. She told me that she missed it. What relationship can linguistics have to that reality?
harderwijk
July 4, 2014 at 08:56
Has it never occurred to “you” (gentle reader) that, while “your” alleged ‘self’ may quite naturally be of some passing, seasonally adjusted importance to “you”, nobody really cares who “you” are? Quite the reverse, in fact. We’re all actually much more obsessively consumed, aren’t we, with “me”, “my self” and “I”. Which includes present writer. Even though nobody much cares who “I” am either. Except for the one and only person who is always obliged to say “I am”, which everybody else is always obliged to instinctively translate as “you are”, nobody ever really cares in the slightest about “you”. It’s always only ever all about “me”. ‘Altruism” sounds nice, as depicted in the glossy catalogue. But whenever “I” try that on, I dunno, it’s just not really “me”. Know what “I’m” saying? Except for professionals, of course. Are you being served? Now, how does that feel? Is your meal quite to your liking, madam? Will that be all, Sir? On behalf of the captain and crew it gives me such enormous pleasure to assure you, listen up in the back, that we’re all in this together and hope to God we actually get through this flight in some sort of one piece, with much relieved harmony. And thank you so much for flying (indistinct). Not forgetting, of course, the reflexive, heart-felt, reflective response, “Oh, dear! That must have been terrible for you!” (Please God, don’t ever say, “Oh, I know exactly how you feel.”) No, there’s always plenty of professionally rehearsed, painfully obvious and therefore entirely predictable, sincerity and concern to go around. For your complete comfort and unspeakable satisfaction. Word of mouth, you know. Oh, dear Lord yes. “You” are certainly very satisfied, we’ll make damn sure of that. Or we’ll all be out of a job. Why, what kind of a doctor would not care about “you”? Or at least have the foolish intestinal fortitude to actually tell “you” as much. “To your face”. Sadly, of course, “you” and “I” are not real (flesh and blood) persons at all. Like all the other words we are obliged to use, the necessarily conventional, universally understood pronouns are all supremely convenient, eminently reliable rhetorical constructs. Figments, that is, of “your” and “my” imagination. And perfectly valid for all that. Do “I” really know who “I” am, whenever “I” am obliged to say who and/or what “I am”? And how and where and why? Interestingly, the ancient Bible writers had their legendary Moses clearly instructed (by another burning Bush, actually not from Texas for once) to go tell Pharaoh, “I Am has sent me”. For sure that oughta let my people go. Gasps all round. The only available expression of “self-consciousness”, right? Not quite. The Hebrew verb ‘to be’ leaves the tense suitably ambiguous. Which implies that “I am” may as readily be understood as synonymous with “I will be”. Though not “I was”, the past tense being the only ‘reality’ one can safely take seriously. By the time we become aware of the “here and now”, the experience is fast receding, as we speak, to surface after the fact, as an incomplete recollection, recited from memory. The “past” is somehow more, what, fixed in aspic? Somebody back there presented an anecdote, presumably implying that an account of personal experience “imprisoned in “now” might somehow lend authenticity to the “self” who allegedly did the actual feeling and suffering. Not realising, of course, that if each vivid account of personal experience were evidence enough for “such a thing as the self”, “you” and “I” would not be here, every blessed day, wasting our valuable time, vehemently denying each other’s personal check account. Nevertheless, the question arose, “What relationship can linguistics have to that reality?” Which, of course, relies beautifully on at least two (besides the usual legion) grand assumptions. First, that “linguistics” is a known quantity, requiring no qualification. And second, that “that reality” is fully established by the slimmest of anecdotal narratives. What relationship could any such nebulous extremities possibly have to one another, indeed? Not as complex, this, as perhaps comparing apples with oranges. But certainly far more complicated. Somebody else patiently explained that, as it’s not that difficult to buy a loaf of bread, that in itself ought, by a tiresome fallacious inference, to prove beyond all doubt, even to the most astute observer, that it is clearly quite feasible, by means of simple language, to be perfectly understood. As though a proposal of marriage, a critical job interview, or choosing the right school for your kids were as cut and dried. The suggestion overlooks, of course, that even fresh bread could be adulterated or contaminated. To which comes the inevitable repost, “but I couldn’t know that at the time!”. Well, no. Precisely. We make grand assumptions all the time. Which may well be right. And are as often wholly misplaced. And there is absolutely no alternative. What say, somebody looks deep into “your” eyes and says, “I love you”. What that person is really saying, of course, depends entirely on all sorts of circumstantial evidence. None of which is necessarily related to the alleged “facts”. Who is speaking to whom, when, where, how and why? Note the facial expression, tone of voice, inflection, accent, environment, ambience, mood, opportunity, pretext, context, subtext and agenda. Beside “your” unrelated financial/emotional commitments elsewhere, of course. Is the intention to be taken literally, metaphorically, sarcastically, humorously, sexually, paradoxically, familiarly, fraternally, collegially, economically, politically …? Or is the expression intended purely as a straightforward socio-cultural convention, a product of non-committal habit? The list of probable possibilities is literally endless. Human relationships can be as many and varied as there are currently ’significant others’ in “my” orbit. We’ve all heard it said publicly, loftily, mostly in pantomime, usually to an insolent minion, “Do you know who I am?” And we instantly recognise the exaggerated “putting on of airs” as intended for comical effect. And yet, that is exactly what we would like to say to anyone who so much as dares to annoy us. Or treats us with somewhat less deference than we would secretly prefer to believe is called for. Of course I know who “I” need to be, as occasion and expedience permits. That is to say, most of the time. We are all acutely aware of our innate propensity for acting “totally out of character”. Often,at the drop of a hat. Only to be told, “that’s not like you at all”. Well, excuse me. Do “I” really need to apologise every time I fail to live up to “your” fatuous expectations? Does anyone ever really know exactly what they were going to say and do before they have said and done it? We wish. Who would not, given the chance, want to revise, edit, possibly even rewrite entirely what they have recently written here? How often does one sentence belatedly sound so wrong now, when re-read in unfortunate juxtaposition with the previous paragraph? And always only when the writing is ineluctably on the wall. Which only goes to show (“me”, at least) that the person I may from time to time allow “myself” to believe “I am” going to be today (or was this morning), is not and cannot by any stretch be, the same person I may now vaguely remember being only yesterday. Let alone last year. So who am “I”, exactly? Of course we can always tell the Police who we are. Where “you” were, what “you” were doing there and what “you” saw. In “your own words” (for the benefit of the tape). And, of course, although “my” name, address and date of birth do not quite explain who “I” really “am”, the Court is regrettably not much interested in the essential essence of identity. Or the ontological relevance of “being there”. Let alone what “I” now believe “I” actually observed, surreptitiously wedged in the fracture between what “I” actually saw and heard. Just the facts, ma’am, if you please. So, no. Of course I don’t know who “I” am. Not even nudists can reveal their true “selves”. The ‘spirit’ may certainly be willing, weather permitting. The pretty/ugly flesh, of the other parameter, is really quite a weak and pathetic facsimile of “such a thing as the self”. So, emphatically, no. There is no deep and meaningful “personality” lurking somewhere inside “my” anatomically correct skin. “I” is just the convenient, conventional public voice of a rhetorical concoction, an environmental hazard, a mythically contrived persona, that each must manipulate according to individual circumstance and wit. “My” alleged experience of “myself”, on the other hand, is quite inaccessible to the rigorous grammatical stricture and censure of conventional language.
P. C. Lehar
July 5, 2014 at 04:07
Ms. Harderwijk , I agree the price of butter and the self are semantic realities, social constructs, the one less so, the other more so. I've tried hard to disbelieve in the existence of my self, but unlike those Yoga people upstream in this discussion, I've always failed. I look out at world through my glasses. I look out through my eye sockets. A surgeon looking in sees only a mass of neurons, but if I believed that, I wouldn't be able to "get through the day". I think I am a man in my body , looking out at the world, like a man watching the street through the windows of his house. Somebody upstream mentioned Descartes' "theater of consciousness" in the brain, the little homunculus in the pineal gland, observing events as if on a screen. Actually that screen has been found, at the back end of the occipital lobe, and there are about 24 more screens like it scattered through the brain. Actually, the homunculus has been found too, two of them. A man shaped cortical map in the parietal lobe controls the motions of my body. The other homunculus, on the occipital lobe, receives sensory inputs from the surface of my skin. That input/output pair of homunculii are the man in the house of my body, as real as the price of butter, aren't they?
haderwijk
July 5, 2014 at 08:39
Who is “Terrence O’Keeffe”? Nobody knows. Not even the loquacious individual belligerently pretending here to be speaking/writing, quite inexhaustibly, it seems, on behalf of ‘the real’ Terrence O’Keeffe? No. Not even the presumably “real” Terrence O’Keeffe knows who Terrence O’Keeffe really is. And, what’s more, nobody cares. OK. So, who is “harderwijk” then? Again, nobody knows. Not even this insufferable smart ass of a donkey … Don Quixote? (Tilting at the windmills of your mind?) … Ponderously pretending here also to be eloquently pontificating, quite remorselessly as well, on behalf of ‘the real’ harderwijk? Certainly not. This writer also has absolutely no idea who the ostensibly “real” harderwijk is supposed to be. In bed or bath. And, sure enough, likewise, nobody cares. Bit like chess, this. Remember Spassky and Fischer (1972)? Not a dry eye in the house then either. Except, in the present case, the hall is quite eyeless, wet or dry. Because nobody came. Boring. Neither interlocutor can abide the other claiming the last word, you see. They’ll still be here when even the cows have left home. Surely. Besides, the odd and most unlikely, gentle reader, possessed of sheer herculean stamina (and the requisite time, that waits for no man) having persevered, with ever-rising brow all the way down to here, would simply not recognise either one of the two ostensible pro- or antagonists on the street. In the flesh, as it were. No idea. Why? Well, both patiently indifferent writers are obliged, under the rules of engagement, to wear masks. The Etruscan mask. Not so much to conceal, as better to reveal the valiant characters of the piece. The ‘dramatis personae’, if you will. Terrence O’Keeffe the impeccable white knight. The darker horse, the illusive harderwijk. As ’tis said, “I need better evidence than the ghost to work with. The play's the thing to uncover the conscience of the king”. (The roar of the greasepaint …) And so, to the script. Not much sword play here. Yet plenty of parry and thrust. A play on words. Each actor must state, with genuine feigned conviction, what s/he imagines a ‘real’ person might say, under those highly contrived, narrowly confined circumstances you always get online, in response to “the other”. Always remaining throughout and above all, true to character. Don’t forget. Strictly no ad libbing allowed. Lest your mask should slip and reveal more than absolutely necessary, for the timeless thespian purposes of optimum dramatic effect. Mind you never say what you really think. You’re not really here, remember. You’re not “just” an actor, playing a part, after all. No. You’re a consummate illusionist. Performing a very difficult, irrationally delusional, intensely conflicted part, that you’ve played for so many seasons now, you would think you could almost recite the lines in your sleep. So beguiling is your rôle, you’re beginning to believe you really are that character they see, your devoted fans beyond the footlights. In fact, if you could just go to sleep while you’re speaking/writing, your on-stage persona would positively shine. Brilliantly. Welcome to that deep, dark and mysterious world of convoluted plots, clever intrigue and shockingly uninhibited make-believe, otherwise known as “effective communication skills”. (Don’t forget the pop-corn.) Round. Like a circle in a spiral. Like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending or beginning. On an ever spinning reel. Like a snowball down a mountain. Or a carnival balloon. Like a carousel that’s turning. Running rings around the moon. Like a clock whose hands are sweeping. Past the minutes of its face. And the world is like an apple. Whirling silently in space. Like the circles that you find. In the windmills of your mind. Like a tunnel that you follow. To a tunnel of its own. Down a hollow to a cavern. Where the sun has never shone. Like a door that keeps revolving. In a half forgotten dream. Or the ripples from a pebble. Someone tosses in a stream. Keys that jingle in your pocket. Words that jangle in your head. Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said? Lovers walk along a shore. And leave their footprints in the sand. Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway. And the fragment of this song. Half remembered names and faces. But to whom do they belong ? He: when you knew that it was over, you were suddenly aware. That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair. She: when you knew that it was over, in the autumn of goodbyes. For a moment you could not recall the colour of his eyes. Like a circle in a spiral. Like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending or beginning. On an ever spinning reel. As the images unwind. Like the circles that you find. In the windmills of your mind. The Windmills of Your Mind. Music by Michel Legrand. English lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Theme for the film, ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968). French lyrics, "Les moulins de mon cœur", by Eddy Marnay. The opening two melodic sentences are taken from Mozart's second movement, Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra.
harderwijk
July 6, 2014 at 02:18
Regrettably, gentle reader, harderwijk has been peremptorily gagged. My last response to Terrence O’Keeffe was left hanging for some hours “subject to moderation”. Only to be deleted in full. Also, for the record, certain of O’K’s comments (and one each of Arnold Trehub and Alyson) were submitted without benefit of the usual ‘Reply’ facility. Whereupon I bid you all adieu. Absent a level playing field, I’ll take my my bat and ball to pastures greener. It was a real business doing pleasure with you. While it lasted.
P. C. Lehar
July 6, 2014 at 14:46
I enjoyed your lengthy essay, and your debate with O'K, and your reply to Al DeBaran. I don't care if you veered off the main topic. That's what's fun.
Peter
July 6, 2014 at 19:10
It's perhaps of little surprise that the 'problem' of 'comments' ("Don't look below the line!")is being increasingly overcome by some publications - scientific, among others - by the removal of the function altogether as they seem to present for some only opportunity for idle distraction and preoccupation, self-satisfying gratification and intellectual self-indulgence, ending almost without exception in an intellectual cul-de-sac of pointlessness. Universities seem dedicated to or produce an endless round of academics hanging around such cul-de-sacs of irrelevance. The real heart of matters, confronting the difficulties of reality, can so easily and comfortably be paid lip service to by many great authorities whose lives and activities serve no purpose but to delay their personal contact and surrender to reality. It's a long-lamented shame and such a drain of human potential and resources. What a different world it could be. Perhaps a more humble and honest confrontation with the nature of ego may bear more fruit but our culture is almost dedicated to promoting it in all endeavours to the highest level. There lies the real challenge, should we be willing to walk the path...
Jim Vaughan
July 9, 2014 at 09:57
Great article! I'm very glad to hear someone resisting the "no self" hypothesis, which to me (follwing Descartes), is the only thing we can know exists for certain! IMHO, "self" has many meanings, not well differentiated. It can refer to our identity, self image, or to Dainton's "potential for consciousness". These are not the same. For me, "consciousness" must be a universal potential, latent in all matter, which emerges in the brain as a coherent individual awareness or "self". Dainton's potential, is the potential of a brain to manifest this latent coherent awareness. Anyway, I'm sure the debate will go on!
Thilak
March 29, 2015 at 17:36
This is why Lord Buddha said that ego is an illusion. When one realized this truth in an meditative state, he or she becomes Enlightened!
stan klein
October 31, 2015 at 15:13
"there is striking evidence (detailed by the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow) that each of us has a “remembering self,” which makes decisions, and an “experiencing self,” which actually does the living." Really? I have studying and publishing on these topics for 30+ years. The evidence is striking alright -- striking in its absence (unless one plays quite freely with the word "evidence").
A.Sriskandarajah
June 14, 2016 at 17:29
It is said in the article that according to neuroscientists, there is no single place in the brain that generates a self. So does it means that I don’t exist? It is very definite that I exist. I don’t need to worry whether there is anything in my brain to generate me. I exist. I don’t need to bother whether self exists or not. What is self? They name something as self and make all arguments whether it exists or not. They scan the brain and do all kind of research to see what it is. Neuroscientists, Psychologists and philosophers write books and give lectures on this subject self. Utter wastage and unnecessary thing. We should find out what am I not the self. But according to Neuroscience there is no single place in the brain that generates a self. So does it mean that the brain is producing selves as a factory? Since there is no place in the brain that generates a self-Neuroscience proves the existence of something which survives death. We may call it soul. According to psychologists, there is no little commander-in-chief in our heads directing our behavior. It is not a right concept. It is an imagination of the Psychologists. There is no little commander in chief. That is right. But there is an existence of I. I am not an ever shifting bundle of thoughts, feelings and memory. I want good feelings and do not want bad feelings. So I cannot be any feelings. Memory is only a record of past events and knowledge. I cannot be memory. I am not my behaviors. I am not my experiences. Memory makes me. Behaviors make me. Experiences make me. But these are all my temporary existence. According to philosophers, there is no “Cartesian ego” unifying our consciousness, no unchanging core of identity that makes us the same person from day to day; there is only an ever-shifting bundle of thoughts, feelings and memories. Really there is no “Cartesian ego” unifying our consciousness, But I exist. I am not that“Cartesian ego” or any nonsense.But all the experiences are unified. How it happens is the question which Philosophers should answer.