Identity: Self/Other 3

William James - Divided the self into two parts, the empirical self and the pure ego. Also known as the "me" and the "I."

Quote: "The universal conscious fact is not "feelings and thoughts exist," but "I think" and "I feel." No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth."

Bernard Baars - A language psychologist and cognitive scientist. He developed the Global Workspace Theory. Agrees with James' "me" and "I" ideas. Thinks of conscious events as happening in the "theater of the mind."

Quote: "Consciousness inherently needs to interact with a self-system, at least if its information is to be reportable and usable."

Galen Strawson - Oxford philosopher. Created the idea of SESMET (Subjects of Experience that are Single MEntal Things). Came to the conclusion that many mental selves exist "one after another, like pearls on a string." He calls this the "Pearl view."

Quote: Being conscious is being "a mental presence; a mental someone; a single mental thing that is a conscious subject of experience, that has a certain character or personality, and that is in some sense distinct from...all other things."

Daniel Dennett - Selves do and do not exist. Believes there is no single center of the brain where all of our self-hood comes from. Rejects the idea of there being any countable number of selves in a split-brain patient.

Quote: "Our tales are spun, but for he most part we don't spin them; they spin us. Our human consciousness, and our narrative self-hood, is their product, not their source."

Thought Experiments with the Self

The first thought experiment is about having your brain switched by Martians with someone else. In the morning, when you wake into full consciousness who has woken up? Have you woken up in someone else's body?

If you think that you will both wake up in the "wrong" body, then presumably you think that the conscious self depends on the brain and not the rest of the body.

Now a similar thought experiment is carried out. The difference is that the Martians only scan the brains, but do not swap them. However, all patterns of neural information, including memories and personality traits are swapped over precisely. Now who do you wake up as? You or the other person? Is the experiencing self tied to the body, the brain, the memories or what?

An ego theorist might react to this thought experiment by saying "of course it will be me" because the experiencing self must be associated with something, whether it is the body, the brain, personal memories, personality traits and preferences or some combination of these or other things.

A bundle theorist believes this is all a waste of time because there is no continuous experiencing self so there is no problem with any of these strange imaginary tales.

More Thought Experiments

For the next thought experiment, imagine that you are offered a free trip, anywhere you want to go, in a tele-transporter. Every cell of your body is scanned and the information is stored, but your body is destroyed in the process. All the information is then sent to your chosen destination and used to reconstruct a replica of you. Since your replica has a brain in exactly the same states as yours was when it was scanned, he or she will remember living your life up to the transportation. This replica will behave just like you, have your personality, and will in every other way be just like you. The only difference is the psychological continuity will not have its normal cause, the continued existence of your brain, but will depend on the information having been transmitted through space.

The question is-would you go?

This time, imagine that only a few cells are replaced, or any proportion of them you like. Is there now some critical percentage beyond which you die and a replica is created in your place? If 50% are replaced, what would you conclude? Would the person who wakes up you half you and half replica?

Neuro-scientific Models of Self

Neuroscientists like to avoid talking about the self or consciousness; they like to equate the self with one particular brain process or functional area of the brain.

Ramachandran believes that his filling-in experiments will help lead to discovering the "nature of the self." Dennett argues that filling-in would have to be done for someone, some viewer or homunculus, and since homunculi cannot exist, filling-in does not occur. But Ramanchandran argues back that filling-in occurs for something rather than someone, and that something is another brain process, an executive process. Filling-in can be seen as a way of preparing qualia for interaction with limbic executive structures. So our conscious experiences are the input to this executive system.

Portuguese neurologist Antonio Damasio distinguishes between the proto-self, the core-self, and the autobiographical self. The proto-self has a preconscious biological precedent in the simplest organisms. This proto-self is a set of neural patterns that map the state of an organism moment by moment. The core-self is "a transient entity, ceaselessly re-created from each and every object with which the brain interacts". The autobiographical self depends on personal memories. Damasio is clear that this self is not any kind of separate entity but is the you that is born as the story of your life is told. For Damasio, consciousness is feeling, and feelings are neural patterns.

According to Baars' Global Workspace Theory, the self-system is the dominant and unifying context of experience and action--the "deep context." Baars considers experiences in which the sense of the self is disrupted or abnormal, such as fugue, multiple personality, and depersonalization. These are precipitated by events that disrupt the stable dominant context and they are associated with loss of autobiographical memory.

"You are the perceiver, the actor and narrator of your experience, although precisely what that means is an ongoing question."

1. What is the point of the tele-transporter thought experiment?

• The purpose of the tele-transporter thought experiment is to uncover whether an individual is an ego theorist or a bundle theorist. In this experiment, if an individual felt as if the replica that appeared in the destination is not truly he or she, that individual is an ego theorist.
  
• This belief that ego theorists have is based on their subjectivity of whether their conscious self will be in existence in the replica or not. Since the original body is destroyed and replicated at the specified location, ego theorists question if that person is actually going to be them or not.
  
• Since a bundle theorist believes there is no such thing as the “real me,” the question of whether if that individual is going to die or not does not matter to them. Bundle theorists believe that “there is no continuous experiencing self”. In addition to the belief that consciousness is never continuous, they belief that a separate conscious self does not exist. As a result, this thought experiment to them is futile.

2. What does James mean when he says that the thoughts themselves are the thinkers?

• When James states the thoughts that an individual has are the thinkers, the reasoning for his logic is highly intriguing. The phrase, “thought it itself the thinker,” means that one’s ego is not the one the factor that is in control of a person’s thoughts. James states that thoughts themselves are the things involved in bringing thoughts together.
  
• In addition, the Thought is significant since it “owns some parts of the stream of consciousness.” What’s more interesting is that when another moment occurs to the individual, the new Thought organizes the old Thought.
  
• Both Thoughts, in a sense, come together and as a result, the Thought is the thinker. This implication that the Thoughts are indeed the thinkers shows how James’ theory is parallel with that of a bundle theorist since a separate conscious self is not the thinker.

3. In Strawson’s theory which aspects of the sense of self are said to be real and which illusory?

• In Strawson’s theory of SESMETS and pearls on a string, Strawson denies the existence of a continuity of consciousness.
  
• Although a person may feel as if the self has “unity both at one moment and over longer periods of time,” Strawson refutes this common belief. He believes that “many mental selves exist, one at a time and one after another, like pearls on a string.”
  
• The feeling that self is persistent and continuous is believed to be an illusion by Strawson. He believes the persisting mental self does not exist.
  
• The aspect of the sense of self that is real is that self does exist, which does not make his theory in accordance with that of bundle theorist, but it’s always different at each stage of an individual’s consciousness, displayed through the pearls on the string.