Mind-Body Philosophy Lecture 11 PDF

Lecture 11 Self-Consciousness and the Self H ow is memory tied to our concept of the self? That’s the topic this lecture explores, using John Locke as our point of reference in the history of philosophy. For Locke, it is the continuity of conscious memory that defines someone’s identity as a per...

Lecture 11 Self-Consciousness and the Self H ow is memory tied to our concept of the self? That’s the topic this lecture explores, using John Locke as our point of reference in the history of philosophy. For Locke, it is the continuity of conscious memory that defines someone’s identity as a person. But there are two distinct questions that Locke runs together as if they were the same question. Distinguishing between those two questions offers a clearer understanding. The first question: What precisely is the sense of self—is it an element added to experience, or is it built into the structure of our experience? The second question: What counts as the “same person” over time? The Sense of Self ●● Our experience seems to come with a sense of the self that is having that experience. Descartes puts the “I” at the core of his certainty: “I think, therefore I am.” ●● Locke says that “when we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything we know that we do so.” Emphasizing a sense of continuous self, he says that it is beyond doubt that “I that write this am the same myself now whilst I write that I was Yesterday.” 110 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● Immanuel Kant, writing a little less than 100 years later, says that the “I think” accompanies all experiences, which would be impossible without it. William James says that within the stream of consciousness there is a sense of self, “felt by all men as a sort of innermost citadel within the circle, of sanctuary within the.” ●● The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio echoes all of these: “Besides the images of what we perceive externally,” there is also “this other presence that signifies you, as observer of the things imaged, potential actor on the things imagined. If there were no such presence, how would your thoughts belong to you?” ●● All of this seems obvious: When it comes to the experiential question, we do have a sense of self. The Same Person ●● What is it that makes someone the same person over time? That’s the question of personal identity. ●● Let’s distinguish qualitative from numerical identity. Two things are numerically identical if they’re literally the same entity. If two people have Subaru Outbacks, they have qualitatively similar vehicles, but not numerically identical. ●● When we talk of changes in someone’s personality, we use the qualitative sense: “He’s not himself today” or “She’s not the woman I married.” We’re bemoaning a qualitative change in personality while relying on the fact that we’re talking about the same person in a numerical sense. ●● Locke believes it is continuity of memory that makes us the same person over time—not identity of bodies. Locke’s argument relies on this thought experiment: Suppose that we implant the consciousness of a prince in the body of a cobbler. We are to imagine that the prince’s consciousness, including his consciousness of his past life, is implanted in the body of the cobbler. Who will that person be? Locke’s answer is unequivocal: the prince. It is the continuity of conscious memory that makes a person the same person over time. L ecture 11 — S elf - C onsciousness and the S elf 111 Dissociative Fugue and Multiple Personalities ●● On January 17, 1887, Reverend Ansel Bourne withdrew $551 from his bank in Providence, Rhode Island, and disappeared, only to reappear in Norristown, Pennsylvania, believing he was a man named A. J. Brown. Later, he eventually awoke one morning as a very confused Ansel Bourne. ●● The pioneering psychologist William James suggested they could explore the case by putting Bourne under hypnosis. Indeed, under hypnosis, A. J. Brown reappeared and was able to describe his travels to Norristown. But even the Brown that appeared under hypnosis claimed to know nothing about Reverend Ansel Bourne. ●● Today the case would be classified dissociative fugue: a case of reversible amnesia for memory, personality, and personal identity. ●● We’ve previously discussed cases in which the hemispheres of the brain are separated by surgically cutting the corpus callosum: A man might say he wants to be a draftsman but spell out that he wants to be a racecar driver with his hand. That certainly sounds like William James’ conclusion: “Mr. Bourne’s skull … covers two distinct personal selves.” ●● That was Michael Gazzaniga’s initial thinking when he started working on split-brain cases. He changed his mind later because of the role of what he called the interpreter. ○○ The left brain of a subject was shown a chicken claw. The right brain was shown a snow scene. The subject was asked to choose a related picture with each hand. ○○ He chose a picture of a chicken with one hand and a picture of a shovel with the other. This is where the interpreter comes in. When asked, “Why did you pick two different things,” the left hemisphere interpreter would make up something that covered the two responses. In this example, the subject said “Oh, that’s easy. You’re going to need a shovel to clean out the chicken coop.” 112 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● Because of the overarching role of the interpreter, Gazzinga ultimately decided that even in split-brain cases, there is only one dominant hemisphere, only one high-level consciousness, and in that sense only one self. Dealing with Odd Cases ●● A number of thinkers have tried to deal with both normal self-consciousness and the aforementioned unusual cases by distinguishing between different senses of self. James, for example, speaks of two selves: a “me” and an “I.” The me includes all those things one tend to call mine: “my social life,” “my virtues and vices,” and “my memories.” James clearly thought of Bourne and Brown as different selves in that sense. ●● But beneath that self, James insists, there is also an “I.” That is the self we feel as the focus of all our experience—the lasting core self. ●● Distinctions between senses of self are also prominent in the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Damasio characterizes the core self, which is reminiscent of short-term memory, as “a transient entity, ceaselessly recreated for each and every object with which the brain interacts.” ●● The other self is what he terms the “autobiographical self.” That self includes lasting characteristics like your name, your history, whether you tend to avoid conflict, and how you approach a problem. The autobiographical self has the properties of long-term memory. Animals ●● Are animals self-conscious? Do they have a sense of self? The standard test for sense of self in animals is the mirror test, developed by the psychologist Gordon Gallup in the 1970s. The test is this: We show the animal a mirror for the first time. L ecture 11 — S elf - C onsciousness and the S elf 113 114 M ind - B ody P hilosophy ●● Then, in some way the animal isn’t aware of—under anesthesia, for example— we put a colored mark on its ear, or its forehead. We then watch how it then behaves in front of the mirror. Does it look at the image and then investigate the mark by reaching to that spot on its own body? If so, it must realize that the image it sees in the mirror is an image of itself. It must, therefore, have a sense of self. ●● Chimpanzees pass the mirror test, as do orangutans and bonobos. Gorillas do not, except for one: Koko, a gorilla raised in close human contact and taught elements of American sign language. Human infants don’t pass the test until somewhere between 18 months and two years old. There have been positive reports of versions of the mirror test for dolphins, orcas, and magpies. ●● The test isn’t without flaws: Many species view staring as a threat, which makes using a mirror problematic. That may complicate results. If the test does reveal a sense of self, it’s unclear what specific self it reveals. ●● Damasio thinks that only simple levels of autobiographical memory are present in other animals. Gordon Gallup, on the other hand, the man who designed the mirror test, thinks that chimpanzees not only recognize themselves in the mirror but have an awareness of self in terms of a personal past and future. The Teletranslator ●● Derek Parfit is a contemporary philosopher who has explored questions of memory and personal identity in great depth, using some strange and wonderful thought experiments. ●● Parfit borrows the idea of a teletransporter from science fiction. Take this thought experiment: Let’s say a teletransporter can take a complete map of your brain and body. Then it can disassemble your atoms and send them to a teletransporter receiver on. There, identical atoms and molecules are assembled to recreate you. L ecture 11 — S elf - C onsciousness and the S elf 115 ●● When you step into the teletransporter, are you suddenly whisked across the universe, or do you die? An atom-by-atom replica of you appears on Alpha Centauri. But maybe it’s just a Xerox copy. It’s not you. You ceased to exist when your atoms were disassembled here in the teletransporter on Earth. ●● Raising further doubts: What if the teletransporter sends the same set of signals to two different places in the universe, making two Xerox copies? Split-brain cases are hard enough. Parfit hands us a split-person case. What happened to the one numerical self-identical you in the process? ●● Parfit thinks the thought experiments show that being the same person isn’t always a matter of yes or no. Our concept gets gray and fuzzy at the hypothetical edges. Parfit calls someone who thinks that selves come in discrete yes-or-no packages an ego theorist. Parfit rejects ego theory. There just aren’t individual selves in the way we intuitively think there are. 116 M ind - B ody P hilosophy