The Self

New Scientist recently published a series of article on the self, available here. The link will work for a short time, so check it now.

     Back when I was teaching literature, the question of the “real person” came up frequently. Many authors write from an omniscient point of view: they tell us what characters think, what they remember, how they feel. This information isn’t available to other characters in the story unless and until it is expressed in speech or (more rarely) in action. It’s remarkably difficult to know exactly what someone else is thinking, or what the world looks and feels like from his or her point of view. We often know a fictional character better than we know the real people in our lives. We also believe that because we know our own experience better than anyone else can, we know our real selves better than anyone else can. In this we are mistaken.
     What is the real self? I don’t think there is one that claim greater authenticity than any other. Our sense of self is the result of massive computation by the brain, which integrates both external and internal sensory inputs (heavily filtered), and emotional responses, to create a model of the world around us. We feel we are at the centre of this model, looking at it from “inside.” The model is just that, an image, a picture, a multi-sensory illusion. Work with optical and other illusions demonstrates how much of that image is computed using rough-and-ready rules about what should be there instead of what’s actually there. We see what we expect to see. Magicians make use of this. A good magic trick sets up expectations that are so powerful that we cannot help seeing what the magician has directed us to see.
     What then is the self as we experience it? It’s the experience of the world which we inhabit. But that world is an illusion: so the self is an illusion, too. What’s the self we ascribe to other people? It’s part of that world; it’s built from expectations which combine both generalised and often hard-wired expectations about what other people’s behaviour means, and our knowledge of their history with us, modified by what we know or can infer about their history with other people. It’s here that our sense of privileged information about our own experience misleads us. We believe that because we know our self from the inside, we have a better knowledge of how that self, “my real self”, will behave in future. That’s simply not true. We know perfectly well that we often have a better insight into a friend’s behaviour than he has; that we are better able to parse the odds of a future behaviour than she can. Why should we believe that our friends have less insight into us than we have into them?
     Part of the illusion of the self is “I”. What is that “I”? I think it’s a point of view. It can be disturbed. The “I” can be located outside the body, it can be split so that it believes the other part(s) are aliens or gods, it can disintegrate to the point that it takes heroic efforts by doctors and family and friends to put it back together again. And drugs, trauma, illness, fatigue, extreme emotion, meditation, and so on can undermine or alter our sense of self so much that we may doubt whether our current self is the real one or not.
     So what metaphor might help us understand what this “self” is? Who or what is “I”? One thing’s for sure: whatever else “I” may be, “I” am a process, a something-that-happens. “I” change constantly, and yet maintain a basic shape, much as a fountain changes constantly, yet maintains a basic shape.
     Or perhaps it would be better to say “I” am one of those fountains that cycles through many shapes, for as long as the water flows. So “I” too cycle through many shapes. “I” behave differently with different people, in different places, at different times, when performing different tasks. Some of those shapes “I” can control: “I” learn manners, language, skills. “I” learn when and when not to express my “inner feelings”, and how to shape that expression. And often “I” am surprised at what “I” do.
     “I” am an interaction with the world around me. “I” am an interface, a mask that shapes the space behind and in front of it. There is nothing else besides that mask. Yet “I” persist in believing that “I” am the reality behind the mask, the real self that the mask hides. Believing this, “I” don’t notice that all “I” know of my self is what the mask looks like from one side, the side “I” believe faces towards the real me.

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