The Illusion of Self
After a brief conversation to warm things up and put Arthur at ease, I asked, “Arthur, who brought you to the hospital?”
“That guy in the waiting room,” Arthur replied. “He’s the old gentleman who’s been taking care of me.”
“You mean your father?”
“No, no, doctor. That guy isn’t my father. He just looks like him. He’s–what do you call it?–an impostor, I guess. But I don’t think he means any harm.
–from Phantoms in the Brain, By V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
Arthur was not delusional or insane; based on the conversations recorded in Ramachandran’s book, he was a lucid, logical, thoughtful person. Unfortunately, however, after a near-fatal automobile accident, he suddenly developed the belief that his parents were actually impostors, actors impersonating his parents for some mysterious, unnamed purpose. This rare condition is known as Capgras’ syndrome. Subsequent investigation revealed that Arthur’s problem most likely stemmed from a disconnection of the sight of his parents’ faces from the emotional responses that they would normally invoke. Most people, when shown pictures of their loved ones, respond with what is known as the galvanic skin response, a slight dampening of the palms measurable through the skin’s lowered electrical resistance. Arthur does not show this effect, although he does show a normal response to other emotionally arousing pictures.
Stories about patients such as Arthur lend insight into the nature of the human condition and the inner workings of your mind. However, in order to gain access to these intellectual riches, you must first learn the fundamental lesson that underlies every tale of the bizarre worlds in which these patients live: you are made of parts.
This lesson is difficult to learn because it contradicts every waking moment of your life. The most salient aspect of conscious experience is its unitary character: when you look at an object, say, a butterfly, you do not independently perceive its motion, its size, its color, and its symbolic significance; your mind binds all of these features together unconsciously, and you perceive only the result. Similarly, when we perceive ourselves, we do not separate the feeling of being a member of a social hierarchy from the awareness of our emotional state, but absorb all of this information (and much more besides) in a single conscious stream. To a certain extent we do feel ourselves pushed and pulled by different drives–at the moment, for example, I am writing this post so that I can justify not going to the gym–but we normally explain away this feeling by assigning some drives to the body, and only claiming possession of certain other drives. I would love to finish this post tonight, but my body will likely distract me with thoughts of food and sleep and girls, thoughts that are not mine but belong to my base physical nature, which is forever preventing me from realizing my true intellectual potential.
Arthur and other such patients teach us that many aspects of our seemingly unitary conscious experiences are actually dissociable: the ability to recognize your parents can be separated from the warm glow you feel in their presence. Oliver Sacks, in his famous book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, described a patient who was unable to perceive motion, even though she could see objects change position. If you wish to cling to the illusion that you are a coherent whole, you might respond that these perceptual and emotional capabilities do not fall within the domain of your self, that they are merely your cognitive slaves, and that even if chunks were cut away from your perceptual and emotional capabilities, your perception of self would remain.
A case study mentioned by Ramachandran in a seminar that he’s teaching at UC San Diego undermines this safe haven as well. One of his patients, a software engineer recently suffered a lesion in his right parietal lobe. Ever since, he has seen an exact duplicate of his own body that mirrors all of his own actions located a foot to his left and a foot in front of him. If hot water is poured into his ear, stimulating the vestibular canal, the doppelganger shrinks, grows, and jumps around. The patient is otherwise completely lucid, and understands that the experience is simply a result of what he calls a “software malfunction.” Perception of the body is not, of course, the only component of the sense of self, but it does seem an inseparable aspect of our self-awareness. If the concept of one’s own body can be affected without significantly altering the other aspects of self, than it stands to reason that one’s sense of emotional or social or spiritual self could be similarly separated.
Very well, you respond, all of these aspects of our experience that you have mentioned can be peeled away, one by one, but these modules are all slaves to my Will, the atom of the soul which cannot be split. All of these parts that you have described jump and compute and laugh and cry at my command, and it is this sense of self that is indivisible, that will only dissipate when I die.
The Will, however, can also be split. As you may already know, our brains are divided into two different hemispheres. One major bundle of fibers, called the corpus callosum, conveys most of the information that travels from one hemisphere to the other. A few patients have had this cord surgically cut, a procedure which lessons the symptoms of severe epilepsy and which was once thought to have virtually no negative consequences, for these patients appear to function normally in everyday life. Careful studies of these patients conducted by Michael Gazzaniga and others, however, revealed a collection of truly bizarre phenomena. In one experiment, a split-brain patient’s right hemisphere was shown the word “laugh” (each hemisphere receives information from only one half of visual space). The patient proceded to laugh. When asked why she was laughing, the patient responded, “You guys come up and test us every month. What a way to make a living!” Since the left hemisphere, which is the only hemisphere capable of speech, did not have access to the command that prompted the laughter, it was forced to invent a reason for the patient’s actions.
In another experiment, the patient’s right hemisphere saw a picture of a snow-covered landscape, and her left hemisphere saw a picture of a chicken claw. The patient’s right hand pointed to a picture of a chicken, while the patient’s left hand pointed to a picture of a snow shovel. (The right hemisphere controls the left hand, and vice-versa.) The patient was then asked why his left hand was pointing to the snow shovel. The left hemisphere, unable to see the picture of the chicken claw, responded by pointing out that he’d need a shovel to clean out a chicken shed.
The distinct impression one receives from reading these studies is that there exist inside these patients two completely autonomous people, each capable of independent thought and action, and each unable to directly communicate with the other. What is it like, then, to be a split-brain patient, to have one’s body be under the control of two different selves? How is it possible that a person’s selfhood, the most incontestably unitary phenomenon that we experience, can be neatly split in half? I would suggest that, in a sense, we all have split brains; our bodies are under the control of many, many selves. It makes as much sense to ask where the “self” is that is controlling your body as it does to ask who is in control of Europe. No one group or party or person is in control of Europe; instead, a number of shifting coalitions vie for control of the region.
If the self is an illusion, therefore, and you truly consist of a loose network of entities with their own agendas, where does that illusion come from? The short answer is that I don’t know, and if you have any bright ideas I urge you to write them down and send them to Nature. It’s possible, however, that the mirage of self arises from what Gazzaniga calls the “interpreter”, the left hemisphere’s tendency to concoct explanations for our actions that may or may not (as the split-brain patients have taught us) have any relation to the actual causes of our behavior. Is this admittedly unfounded idea is correct, then our identity fundamentally rests in our ability to tell stories, to make up post-hoc tales about our own motivations. This revelation would, perhaps, not have surprised Shakespeare.
One day Arthur turned to his mother and said, “Mom, if the real Arthur ever returns, do you promise that you will still treat me as a friend and love me?”
18 Responses to “The Illusion of Self”
Great post.
It’s high time people of faith take a look at such phenomena through a scientific lens. I tire of good Christians quick to dismiss ordinary, if puzzling, scientific mysteries by ascribing them to “the demonic.”
I am reminded of a delightful piece of fiction I came across lately.
In a 1991 science-fiction story by Terry Bisson, we listen in on a conversation between the robotic commander of an interplanetary expedition and his equally electronic leader, reporting with astonishment that the human inhabitants of Earth are “made out of meat”:
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. … ”
“That’s impossible. … How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector, and they’re made out of meat.” …
“Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. … ”
“Nope, we thought of that, since they do have meat heads. … But … they’re meat all the way through.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there is a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat!”
“So … what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat?”
“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Dreaming meat! The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?”
I have not read Bisson, but after finding this I am tempted to learn more about him.
This idea is not particularily new. (See Gautama, Siddhartha c.500BCE, Nagarjuna c.200CE, Vasubandhu, Asanga c350CE, et. al.) Were these guys merely engaging in metaphysical speculation or building on empirical observation? You decide.
I agree with your various insights about how one’s perceptions and impressions of reality are impossible to separate from the organ we perceive with — the brain. However, the “self” isn’t those perceptions, it’s consciousness.
Consciousness is so much more that the senses/responses to stimuli our body goes though. When I believe something, or feel something, or see something, those experiences aren’t my consciousness itself, but events within my conscious experience.
But you can’t pin down my consciousness to a slide, put it under a microscope, take a picture of it, and put it in a textbook.
Thus, the hard sciences are very bad at studying consciousness/the self, in my opinion, because they like to study tangible things that they can poke and prod and isolate and break down into material pieces they can name.
So it’s not surprising that they often end up concluding that consciousness in fact doesn’t exist at all — because you can’t do those things to consciousness.
John,
Many thanks–I read the story years ago and I could never remember who wrote it. Where can I find it again?
Luminous,
Intriguing… any suggestion for sources (preferably secondary) where I could investigate further?
Aaron,
How, though, do you reconcile your belief in the fundamentally unitary nature of consciousness with the existence of split-brain patients, who as far as anyone can tell actually have two selves? I’m not saying you can’t do it, but if you can, I would certainly like to know how.
It’s an interesting phenomenon.
Because we don’t know what, if any, conscious experience occurred behind the woman’s responses to stimuli on either side of her brain, there are three alternatives:
(1) only the stimuli to one side of her brain was actually experienced;
(2) the stimuli to both sides of her brain were experienced, but neither experience included the stimuli to the other side;
(3) there was no experience of the stimuli to either side of her brain; the only “experience” was that the scientists had as they observed her responses. (This appears to be the scientists’ conclusion).
I can’t know which of these were the case, because I am not privy to the *experiences* (if any) that occurred from the woman’s perspective when she was being poked and prodded.
Of course, I am not privy to *anyone’s* conscious experiences from their perspective. Therein lies the contradiction of studying consciousness/the self using objective science.
I think that the only real way to understand consciousness is to examine your own conscious experience. Your own conscious experience is the only true consciousness you will ever see (as far as I know).
The hard sciences take the self (the conscious experience) out of the picture, and define consciousness based on objective descriptors. To paraphrase J.W. Dunn, this is like reading someone else’s description of what the color “red” looks like, or what roses smell like, believing you will be able to recognize “redness” when you see it or roses when you smell them for the first time.
In other words, instead of examining their own consciousness they try to examine other people’s consciousness. Since you can’t do that, they argue it doesn’t exist at all.
I agree that attempts to create an objective description of consciousness always seem frustratingly incomplete. But that is because there is nothing objective about consciousness, not because consciousness doesn’t exist.
But all “objective” things can only be observed within subjective consciousness. You say that as far as you can tell, subjective consciousness doesn’t exist … I say that as far as I can tell, objective reality doesn’t exist. I’m guessing both of us are uncomfortable with accepting the other person’s assertion.
Happiness, materialism, consciousness, dualism, the soul. Adam Tierney
Aaron,
You’re right, the only way that we can determine whether or not any other person experiences actual qualia is by observing their behavior. I’m willing to make that inferential leap. If you’re not, then I am of course unable to argue with you, because the position is logically unassailable; unfortunately, it also follows that you might as well treat everyone you know as if they were a mere automaton.
If you accept, on the other hand, that whether or not an organism experiences qualia can be inferred from its behavior, I think it follows naturally that both the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of split-brain patients experience qualia, since both are capable of the sort of intelligent behavior that we expect from thinking humans.
Erico,
Yes yes, there is truly nothing new under the sun, and I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll find genetics and the Big Bang and chaos theory in the writings of Augustine and Plato. The difference is that now we have access to empirical findings that those who came before us could not even imagine. Split brain patients simply did not exist before this century, and as such Augustine could not comment on them. That is why I prefer to read neuroscience to inform my beliefs about happiness and materialism and the soul, even though far wiser men have touched on these issues in the past; they simply didn’t know what we know today.
Adam,
“unfortunately, it also follows that you might as well treat everyone you know as if they were a mere automaton”
We’re probably miscommunicating here, because that’s exactly what I’m afraid ignoring the subjective nature of consciousness does. By makeing the “self” disappear, science can do all sorts of things to living things that would be otherwise morally repugnant (and, of more concern to me, terrifying).
Take the whole recent Teri Schiavo mess. By defining consciousness as response to stimuli, science made Teri’s “self” disappear, and let other people make her choices for her. The same thing happens all the time with treatment of animals by science — mucho suffering of animals is justified by defining them as meat, rather than as having any sort of consciousness like ours.
Once science makes human consciousness/self disappear, scientists can happily go about doing pretty much anything to anybody and justify it as simply playing with “parts” of a person.
Anyway, that’s my nightmare scenario regarding the objective view of consciousness. I suppose you probably have a similar one that repels you from accepting subjectivity as the paradigm.
Like you, I don’t believe the “self” exists in the way it’s usually talked about in conversation — basically as a “spirit” controlling the body like a pupper from inside your head. Whatever consciousness is, it’s clearly not that simple.
The self/consciousness that actually experiences reality may not even really remember anything on its own, but rather rely on the brain to tell it who it is and where it’s been. But I don’t think that means that consciousness doesn’t exist independant of the activities we observe occuring in the brain.
Tierney, do you think that Benjamin Libet’s work on the illusion of free will might be relevant here? I’d be curious to know what you think of it. I’ve long thought that the work is much more relevant to debunking claims concerning the conscious self than about claims actually concerning free will (but maybe that’s just ’cause I’m a compatabilist).
Interestingly, when Arthur’s mother calls on the phone and he hears her voice but does not see her, he believes that the person he is talking to is in fact his mother and, indeed, he displays the galvanic skin response. I assume Capgras syndrome comes in different forms depending on which sensory imput is disconnected from higher emotive response.
Finally got around to reading all of this fascinating post. It’s hard for me to believe that split-brain patients have two “selves” with independent thoughts and actions. It seems that this would cause major functional problems which would not go unnoticed for years. For instance, how could such a patient successfully complete a task involving both mental and physical efforts?
I’m not a cognitive scientist, but it seems more believable to me that a split-brain person, under the test conditions described by Adam, is compartmentalizing information in an unusual way.
A few comments. First, I fully support the scientific study of the brian, and defer to any medical, neurological, chemical, evolutionary, or biological expertise you may have that pertains to the subject matter, though not your epistemological suppositions nor your philosophical conclusions about self.
My prior post was noting from a biographical standpoint the intellectual ‘travel’ of St. Augustine, his intellectual conversion. Borrowing from Fr. Richard Liddy, these may be described as:
1) Conversion from corporeal thinking;
2) Refutation of skepticism;
3) Faith and understanding;
4) Veritas: from truths to the Truth.
Soley an amateur in Bernard Lonergan’s thought, and in my own self-appropriation, I may only be in a position to point the way to those with a fuller development.
Philip McShane has written:
I take Aaron’s distinction of consciousness over your description of self.
Finally, given your example of the split-brain patient, it is coincidental, ironic or fortuitous, depending upon your perspective, that Lonergan pinpoints his moment of intellectual conversion coming in his study of two natures, human and divine, in the one person of Jesus Christ. (see http://www.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_seven_lonergan.htm)
To a certain extent, Aaron, I agree with you; however, there are two ways to look at the moral consequences of a materialistic viewpoint. One is that, if consciousness/theself are really illusions, than we’re all just machines and you can do whatever you want to anybody without moral consequences. Another way to look at it, however, is that since there’s no special conscious soul separating us from the animals, that’s all the more reason not to experiment on them (especially primates). Just because intelligent life springs from the action of pure matter doesn’t make it less precious. (Incidentally, there may very well be some reason why we have a stronger self-concept than other animals, such as an ability to make meta-representations, or representations of our own representations.)
The Schiavo case is an entirely different matter, one which to be honest I’m tired of discussing. That’s an ugly episode in our nation’s history that I’d just as soon forget.
Philosopher,
I suppose the Libet experiments would be relevant, especially to my final point that consciousness may be some sort of gloss laid on top of the decisions that our brains and bodies make “for us”. (If I remember correctly, this is Dennett’s claim as well.)
Eric,
It does seem hard to believe–I find these results as astouding as anything else that science has discovered in the last half-century–but I think the only logical conclusion is that these patients contain two selves. The hemispheres simply have no way to send information to one another; there are some sub-cortical structures that are unimpaired, but they mainly deal with boring administrative functions like breathing.
The reason why these patients aren’t noticeably impaired during everyday life is that people move their eyes and heads around all the time during everyday life, and therefore each hemisphere would be exposed to all of the available information, and would of course be aware of the result of the other hemisphere’s actions. It’s only when you expose these people to the artificial atmosphere of the lab that these weird phenomena come to light.
Erico,
I have to admit–and this may simply be due to my lack of background in theology–that I’ve lost the logical thread of your argument. What exactly is there in Augustine’s writing that bears on the issue of the self, especially given the light that has been thrown on it by these recent findings?
“though not your epistemological suppositions nor your philosophical conclusions about self.”
Clarification: are you merely suggesting that my epistemological suppositions are wrong, which they may very well be, or are you objecting to the process of making epistemological suppositions based on data from neuroscience?
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THE ILLUSION OF THE FALSE SELF
The hole in the doughnut
God created Adam and Eve.
They disobeyed God.
Adam & Eve were cast out of the garden.
They had no existence of their own.
Apart from their dependence on God for their existence they were nothing.
They willed to exist apart from God. They wished to reign as their own masters. The emperor of evil came willingly to their aid.
The false self came into existence as an illusion. The catastrophic seeds of vanity and pride were inserted into their wills to separate them from the love of God. They would no longer wish to be part of his body. They would now unknowingly be part of the make believe. They would be independent creatures worshiping a false God, understood as the false self. They did not realize as a false self, they were in reality worshiping nothing, no more than a hole in a doughnut. They, in their sin, chose nothingness over their dependence on their creator. Separated from their real selves they no longer could partake in the sharing of the body of Christ, the function that they were created for.
The devil instilled in them the belief that they could now exist apart from God. Their belief in their independence would be bulwarked by their vanity and pride.
Their false self would now be the master of their ego. They would usurp the power of God, a slave to none. They would be independent selves with the power to possess all. They had accepted the idea that man was now completely separate from God’s will and free to have an independent being and a will without restrictions.
They bought the grand illusion not realizing that the truth was not in the evil one. The devil laughed at man’s greed and adverseness. The master of evil was skilled at his trade. Vanity and pride served well as the rock that supported the false self. Man had willed his own nemeses
Even to this day, due to our God like egos, the idea that the false self is nothing but an illusion is never accepted and highly ridiculed. For a man to willingly abdicate his rule would be a contradiction to his false nature. Our pride and vanity remain steadfast in defense of this false idol, therefore making it impossible to accept our salvation without the mercy of God.
Did you ever notice how few homilies, books, and lectures have pointed out the worst threat to our salvation. How we all use the hole in the doughnut, the nothing of life, as a life with meaning. The false self strives for false success; in actuality we pay homage to failure.
Only the saint with the help of God’s grace can pick up his cross, deny his false self and follow Jesus.