Questions about the Self

Seeing as how I’m all about learning things and being challenged by new ideas (hence this blog), at some point last year I figured I should be doing this stuff in real life too. I searched around my local community for some sort of philosophical discussion group, and although I was surprised at the slim pickings in this supposedly intellectual region, I did end up finding a small group of like-minded people with whom I've been sharing some very enlightening discussions for the past half a year or so. The organizer of the group recently emailed me asking if I would be willing to lead the discussion for the upcoming topic “What is the Self?” and I happily agreed. Here I’ll sketch out some ground I’d like to cover at the meet-up and try to raise some questions that should generate an active discussion.

Contemplating the necessary components.

The first question in any debate about such a nebulous topic is a pedantic one: how do we define our terms? Defining the self can be a cumbersome task though; somewhat like explicating the function of “the” in a sentence, the explanation is disproportionately more difficult than the usage. I thought a better way to get people comfortable talking about themselves would be to flip the question and ask what they would have to lose in order to not be themselves any longer – in other words, what would have to happen for you to become someone else?

Becoming someone else is an idea that makes me uncomfortable to think about. I like me and would prefer to continue being me for as long as possible. But I don’t need to look too far into the past to find someone who occupies not only all of my familiar places but even my body, someone who I hesitate to identify as me. I recognize that at one point this person was me, but whoever he was is distinct from the me that exists currently. Becoming someone else is evidently something I've done before, probably several times at least, and yet it’s something I look forward to doing again with trepidation. On the other hand, some changes seem desirable; for example, I will be in some very subtle way different after the meet-up discussion of this topic – hopefully more informed and knowledgeable. This change doesn't seem as problematic because something necessary is maintained: the periphery is affected but the core remains the same.

Often becoming someone new means altering what we consider to be our core in some profound way. We can look for examples of people around us who we believe to have changed into someone else at some point in time: the wife who has become severely mentally ill, the athlete dismembered in an automobile accident, and the parents who lost their child are potential examples of people who have become other than themselves through circumstances outside of their control. Their core identities seem to have shifted to the point where we hesitate to describe them in the terms we once did. On the other side of tragic loss we have dramatic, purposeful reinvention, such as the man who becomes the woman, the addict who turns sober, or the obese woman who cultivates a healthier body that she comes to love and identify with.

I don’t mean to suggest that all changes of circumstance are bad and all purposeful changes good. I imagine things can certainly go the other way too. But I do think it’s important to recognize that people can become other than themselves both willingly and unwillingly.

Developmental factors.

Where does the self come from? Relying on nothing more than my present introspection, I believe I can identify three sources of the self. The first I would describe as the inner source of the self: the self that is given. Upon reflection, you also should be able to recognize that there are at least some properties of yourself, whether they've always existed or emerged at some point in time, that you did not consciously choose. I’m reminded of Ex Machina, when Nathan asks Caleb about his type of girl: “why is that your thing? Because you did a detailed analysis of all racial types and you cross-referenced that analysis with a points based system – no!” Some aspects of ourselves just are the way they are, regardless of what we have to say about them.

The first source of the self gives way to the second: the self-directed, becoming self. At some point in its successful development the given self becomes capable of (1) self-recognition and (2) reasoned decision-making. It correlates decisions with positive or negative experiences, and comes to understand that some choices will preserve itself and some choices will change itself. It becomes capable of projecting an image of itself into a possible future, identifying desirable pathways and pursuing them in reality.

The second source of the self is distinct from the first in that it allows, at least conceptually, the self to be in control of its own destiny. It helps the self to identify its own existence in the world and recognize the counterfactual realm of its non-existence. The third source of the self is more akin to the first in that it forces the self to identity with that which is often outside of its control. This third source is the world external to the self and its body: the social and natural environment. This world encroaches on ability of the self to become freely, often imposing not just limitations but viable alternatives to its identification, some of which can be disturbing. In the process of becoming, we recognize that part of being a self is being a part of a social group, and we take up labels and banners that reflect our memberships and our willingness to be categorized or even subsumed. Oftentimes however, society imposes these memberships on us, even going to far as to dismiss the relevant facts in favour of superficial indicators of belonging.

We can’t choose our origins, nor can we control all of the ways that we’re sorted and stereotyped by others, but between these two extremes lies some wiggle room regarding the self we can become. This proposed model of the self is merely the product of an exploratory exercise, but I look forward to comparing it with other models and hearing how others respond to it.

Interrogating the self with science.

What would it mean to have a science of the self? I would like to suggest a few methods that could allow the self to become an object of scientific scrutiny: (1) if surveys were conducted where members of a particular demographic listed the ways that they defined themselves, creating a generalizable self-concept to be used in observational research; (2) if an fMRI scanner showed that when people thought about the self in some way, a particular part of the brain became active (preferably one that linked to other self-relevant information); (3)if  neuropsychological studies showed that brain damage or manipulation led to a change in the experience or understanding of the self. Many of these methods are, of course, already in use, if not for researching the self explicitly than rather as part of a broader programme intended to reveal certain truths about the human being.

The immediate weakness in all three of these research methodologies is that it becomes difficult to imagine how they could go far enough to produce a definition of the self that could be used prescriptively. Could we really identify something like a self-concept on an fMRI scan so precisely that we could say a subject was wrong in saying that he was thinking about his self? This would be like telling someone who claims to feel happy that they really aren't. It’s difficult to imagine how the epistemic authority regarding such a topic could lie elsewhere than with the person doing the experiencing.

This doesn't mean that the self can’t be studied scientifically – it already is and will continue to be – but it does reveal that we have to be vigorous and explicit about our definitions and the implications of research results around such loaded and intangible mental constructs. Here, as in many other cases, it’s important that good philosophy precedes the science and follows it closely.

What does it mean to say that the self is an illusion?

There’s been no shortage of headlines in the last decade about how the sciences have proved that something we believe to be true about human nature is mistaken, illusory, or just plain non-existent. The self has not been spared from this eliminative treatment, and it (along with free will) has arguably been reduced to a meaningless fluff of confused pre-scientific semantics. Compelling research from neuroscience and social psychology has now placed us in the precarious position of asking what it would mean to be wrong about ourselves.

The psychological sciences are actually comparatively recent players in the game of rejecting the common-sense self. Various East Asian traditions have encouraged this kind of self-denial for longer than even natural science has been around. But how far can a denial of the self really take us? At some point we must also reject the agent that is doing the denying, and then we approach a paradoxical confusion. A joke I like to make about authors who reject the self concerns the name that gets printed on the fronts of their books – if they don’t exist, why should they care whose name it is?

As we noted near the beginning of this post, when discussing the self it is important to know that we’re all talking about the same thing. To say that the self is an illusion doesn't mean to reject every version of it completely, it could just mean that the self is other than it seems. As we treat our common-sense notions of the self with an increasing dose of skepticism, we will be better equipped to say where its existence and influence begin and end.

Know thyself.

In the Socratic dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates cuts off an emerging theological tangent proposed by his eponymous conversant. “I have no leisure for such inquiries,” he says, “shall I tell you why? I must first know myself… to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.” Socrates’ opinion here is one that occurs a few times among ancient Greek writers. The oft-cited maxim “Know thyself” is attributed to an inscription in Temple of Apollo, home to the Oracle of Delphi who once announced that no man in Athens was wiser than Socrates.

Knowing yourself is a lifelong project that involves figuring out your history, having deep and intimate knowledge of your present subjective states and what they mean, and recognizing the kinds of changes that you might elicit or succumb to. It assumes that there exists a you that has the power to know, not just about its surroundings but about its own nature and internal, mental life.

It’s not always clear that we can know ourselves as deeply as we would like. Psychoanalysis was the first school of psychology to really emphasize our lack of awareness of ourselves and the reasons for our actions. Like the centipede that got tripped up contemplating its legs, it may be necessary for the continuance of our everyday functions to not be aware of everything we're thinking and doing. Even in the rare moments when we are capable of interrogating ourselves, there may be things we don’t want to know the truth about. We could find ourselves to be frighteningly weak and vulnerable, or the opposite: “powerful beyond measure”. Knowing ourselves better could force us to expand or reduce our moral obligations and commitments. It could bring us closer to others or separate us further, depending our how our deepest depths reflect what we infer and assume about theirs.

Upon thinking about the self, it seems we are challenged with many questions we can’t immediately answer. Lacking the spare time to stop and think, we move through the world using the answers that come to us implicitly, leaving the moral implications aside until we’re forcibly confronted. Why wait until then? This topic is clearly ripe for philosophical exploration, and I look forward to engaging with it further very soon.