What do I do?
Hold out your arm in front of you and then, whenever you feel like it, spontaneously and of your own free will, flex your wrist. You might like to do this a few times, making sure you do it as consciously and spontaneously as you can. You will probably experience some kind of inner dialogue or decision process in which you hold back from doing anything, and then decide to act. Now ask yourself, what began the process that led to the action? Was it you?
This task formed the basis of some fascinating experiments carried out by the neurosurgeon Benjamin Libet (1985). His subjects had electrodes on their wrists to pick up the action, and electrodes on their scalps to measure brain waves, and they watched a revolving spot on a clock face. As well as spontaneously flexing their wrists they were asked to note exactly where the spot was when they decided to act. Libet was therefore
timing three things: the start of the action, the moment of the decision to act, and the start of a particular brain wave pattern called a readiness potential. This pattern is seen just before any complex action, and is associated with the brain planning the series of movements to be carried out. The question was, which would come first, the decision to act or the readiness potential?
If you are a dualist you may think that the decision to act must come first. In fact what Libet found was that the readiness potential began about 550 milliseconds (just over half a second) before the action, and the decision to act about 200 milliseconds (about one–fifth of a second) before the action. In other words, the decision to act was not the starting point – a finding that can seem a little threatening to our sense of self. There was much controversy over his results and many criticisms of the experiments, but given all I have said above, his results were only to be expected. There is no separate self jumping into the synapses and starting things off. My brain does not need me.
So what does my self do? Surely it must at least be the centre of my awareness; the thing that receives impressions as I go about my life? Not necessarily. This false view is just part of Dennett’s illusory Cartesian Theatre. You can think about this either logically, or from the point of view of your own experience. We have already considered the logic; so now let us try to introspect carefully. Sit down comfortably and look at something uninteresting. Now concentrate on feeling the sensations from your body and on hearing what is going on around you. Stay like that long enough to get used to it and then ask yourself some questions. Where is that sound? Is it inside my head or over there? If it’s over there, then what is hearing it? Can I be conscious of the thing that is hearing it? If so, am I separate from that thing as well?
You can make up your own questions. The general idea is an old one, and has been used in many meditation traditions over the millennia. Staring determinedly into your own experience does not reveal a solid world observed by a persisting self but simply a stream of ever–changing experience, with no obvious separation between observed and observer. The eighteenth–century Scottish philosopher David Hume explained that whenever he entered most intimately into himself he always stumbled upon some particular perception – of heat or cold or pain or pleasure. He could never catch
himself
without a perception, nor observe anything but the perception. He concluded that the self was no more than a ‘bundle of sensations’ (Hume 1739-40). The very natural idea that ‘I’ hear the sounds, feel the sensations, or see the world may be false.
Another series of experiments by Libet (1981) adds an interesting twist
to the argument. Conscious sensory impressions can be induced by stimulating the brain, but only when it is continuously stimulated for about half a second. It is as though consciousness takes some time to build up. This would lead to the odd idea that our conscious appreciation of the world lags behind the events, but because of a process Libet calls ‘subjective antedating’ we never realise it is lagging behind. The story we tell ourselves puts events in order. Further experiments showed that with short stimuli (too short to induce conscious sensation) people could nevertheless guess correctly whether they were being stimulated or not (Libet
et al.
1991). In other words they could make correct responses without awareness. Again the implication is that consciousness does not direct the action. Conscious awareness comes all right, but not in time. The hand is removed from the flame before we consciously feel the pain. We have whacked the tennis ball back before we can be conscious of it coming towards us. We have avoided the puddle before we were conscious of its existence. Consciousness follows on later. Yet we still feel that ‘I’ consciously did these things.
Something else we think we do is to believe things. Because of our beliefs we argue vehemently over dinner that President Clinton really could not have done it, that the Israelis ought (or ought not) to have built those homes, that private education ought to be abolished, or that all drugs should be legalised. We are so convinced of our belief in God that we will argue for hours (or perhaps even go to war or lay down our life for Him). We are so convinced by the alternative therapy that helped
me
that we force its claims on all our friends. But what does it mean to say that I believe? It sounds as though there must be a self in there who has things called beliefs, but from another perspective there is only a person arguing, a brain processing the information, memes being copied or not. We cannot actually find either the beliefs or the self who believes.
The same can be said of memory. We speak as though the self pulls up memories at will from its personal store. We conveniently ignore the fact that memories are ever–changing mental constructions, that often we fail to remember accurately, that some memories come unbidden and that we often use complex memories with no conscious awareness at all. It is more accurate to say that we are just human beings doing complex things that need memory and who then construct a story about a self who does the remembering.
In this, and many other ways, we seem to have an enormous desire to describe ourselves (falsely) as a self in control of ‘our’ lives. The British psychologist Guy Claxton suggests that what we take for self control is just a more or less successful attempt at prediction. Much of the time our
predictions about what we will do next are reasonably accurate and we can get away with saying ‘I did this’ or ‘I intended to do that’. When they go wrong we just bluff. And we use some truly outrageous tricks to maintain the illusion.
I meant to keep my cool but I just couldn’t. I’m supposed not to eat pork but I forgot. I’d decided on an early night but somehow here we are in Piccadilly Circus at four a.m. with silly hats and a bottle of wine … If all else fails – and this is a truly audacious sleight of hand – we can reinterpret our failure of control as an actual success! ‘I changed my mind,’ we say (Claxton 1986, p. 59).
Claxton concludes that consciousness is ‘a mechanism for constructing dubious stories whose purpose is to defend a superfluous and inaccurate sense of self (1994, p. 150). Our error is to think of the self as separate, persistent, and autonomous. Like Dennett, Claxton thinks that the self is really only a
story
about a self. The inner self who does things is an illusion.
The function of a self
Where have we got to in this brief exploration of the nature of self and consciousness? I can summarise by comparing two major kinds of theory about the self. On the one hand are what we might call ‘real self theories. They treat the self as a persistent entity that lasts a lifetime, is separate from the brain and from the world around, has memories and beliefs, initiates actions, experiences the world, and makes decisions. On the other hand are what we might call ‘illusory self theories. They liken the self to a bundle of thoughts, sensations, and experiences tied together by a common history (Hume 1739–40; Parfit 1987), or a series of pearls on a string (Strawson 1997). On these theories, the illusion of continuity and separateness is provided by a story the brain tells, or a fantasy it weaves.
Everyday experience, ordinary speech and ‘common sense’ are all in favour of the ‘real self, while logic and evidence (and more disciplined experience) are on the side of the ‘illusory self’. I prefer logic and evidence and therefore prefer to accept some version of the idea that the continuous, persistent and autonomous self is an illusion. I am just a story about a me who is writing a book. When the word ‘I’ appears in this book, it is a convention that both you and I understand, but it does not refer to a persistent, conscious, inner being behind the words.
Now, having accepted that, a new question arises. Why do we humans
tell this story? If no persistent conscious self exists, why do people believe it does? How is it that people routinely live their lives as a lie?
The most obvious kind of explanation to try is that having a sense of self benefits the replication of our genes. Crook (1980) argues that self–consciousness arose from using Machiavellian Intelligence and reciprocal altruism, with its need for balancing the trust and distrust of others. In a rather dualistic version of a similar theory Humphrey (1986) suggests that consciousness is like an inner eye observing the brain. As primates developed ever more complex social structures, their survival began to depend on more sophisticated ways of predicting and outwitting others’ behaviour. In this, he argues,
Homo psychologicus
would win out. Imagine a male who wanted to steal a mate from his rival or get more than his fair share of a kill. Predicting what the rival would do next would help, and one way to predict what others will do is to observe your own inner processes. These and other theories suggest that a complex social life makes it necessary to have a sense of self, to tot up scores in reciprocation, and to develop what psychologists now call a ‘theory of mind’ – that is, the understanding that other people have intentions, beliefs, and points of view.
However, this does not explain why our theory of mind is so wrong. Surely one could understand one’s own behaviour without creating the idea of a separate and persistent self when it does not exist. Crook and Humphrey jump from the idea that early hominids might have benefited genetically by having an accurate model of their own behaviour to the idea that they would therefore acquire the idea of a separate self. Our self, the self we are trying to understand, is not just a model of how our own body – and by inference other bodies – is likely to behave, but a false story about an inner self who believes things, does things, wants things and persists throughout life.
Self–deception can have benefits. According to Trivers’ (1985) theory of adaptive self–deception, hiding intentions from oneself may be the best way to hide them from others, and so deceive them. However, this theory does not help in the case of inventing a central self. Dennett (1991) describes us as adopting ‘the intentional stance’; that is, we behave ‘as if’ other people (and sometimes animals, plants, toys and computers) have intentions, desires, beliefs, and so on. He argues that this metaphor of agency is a practical necessity of life; it gives us new and useful tools for thinking with. The problem is, it seems to me, that we apply this intentional stance too thoroughly to ourselves – we fall too deeply into the ‘benign user illusion’. We do not say to ourselves ‘it’s
as if
I have intentions, beliefs and desires’ but ‘I really do’. I am left wondering how
we get from the evolutionary advantage of having a theory of mind, or the practical advantage of adopting the intentional stance, to living our lives as a lie, protecting our ideas, convincing others of our beliefs, and caring so much about an inner self who does not exist.
Perhaps we create and protect a complex self because it makes us happy. But does it? Acquiring money, admiration, and fame gives some kind of happiness, but it is typically brief. Happiness has been found to depend more on having a life that matches your skills to what you are doing than to having a rich lifestyle. The Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) studied the fulfilling experience of ‘flow’ that artists describe when they lose themselves in their work. ‘Flow’ comes to children playing games, people deep in conversation, people skiing or mountain climbing, playing golf or making love. These all entail the same sense of happiness through loss of self–consciousness.
What makes
you
happy? Or consider the reverse: What makes
you
unhappy? Probably it is things like disappointment, fear of the future, worry about loved ones, not having enough money, people not liking you, living too stressful a life, and so on. Many of these things are only relevant to a creature that has self–awareness and the idea of a self as the owner of experience. Other animals can show disappointment, as when food does not arrive when they expect it, but they cannot have the deep disappointment of not getting a job, the fear of being thought stupid, or the misery of thinking someone they care about does not like them. We construct many of our miseries out of the idea of a persistent self that we desperately want to be loved, successful, admired, right about everything, and happy.
According to many traditions this false sense of self is precisely the root of all suffering. This idea is probably clearest in Buddhism with the doctrine of
anatta
or no self. This does not mean that there is no body, nor that there is literally no self at all, but that the self is a temporary construction, an idea or story about a self. In a famous speech, the Buddha told the monks ‘actions do exist, and also their consequences, but the person that acts does not’ (Parfit 1987). He taught that because we have the wrong idea about our self, we think that we will be happy if we gain more material things, or status or power. In fact it is wanting some things and being averse to others that makes us unhappy. If only we could realise our true nature then we would be free of suffering because we would know there is no ‘me’ to suffer.
Now we can see the difference between Dennett’s view and the Buddhist one. Both understand the self to be some kind of story or illusion, but for Dennett it is a ‘benign user illusion’ and even a life-enhancing
illusion, while for the Buddhist it is the root of human suffering. Either way it is an untruth. There is no doubt that having a clear sense of identity, a positive self–image and good self–esteem are associated with psychological health, but this is all about comparing a positive sense of self with a negative one. When we ask what good is done by having a sense of self at all, the answer is not obvious.