Self-Consciousness

Self-consciousness - the awareness of the self as an entity of the environment. Related to self-awareness and the "self", and maybe to shadow emergence. No computer has ever been designed that is aware of what it's doing.

What is self-consciousness ?

"Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?.." (the sperm whale in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

When we think, certain patterns are brought into existence. Since a brain contains more than 100 billion neurons, each pattern is a vast collection of nearly invisible little things or processes. When we think of ourselves, a pattern is brought into existence, too. It is the identification of a vast collection of nearly invisible little items with a single thing: yourself.

Except the abstract idea, there is no immaterial "self" hovering over hundred billion flickering neurons. If god is a coordinated hallucination of people, then the mind is a coordinated hallucination of neurons. The idea of a self or soul as the originator of the own thoughts is an illusion and hallucination - but you may ask "if the self is unreal, then who is reading this?". So maybe it is more precise to say that the self is a confusing insight or an insightful confusion. The essence of self-consciousness seems to be this strange combination of insight and confusion.

Dan Dennett says it is uncomfortable to understand consciousness. People don't want it explained. They don't want to know that they are just machinery and that their self is a convenient fiction or, in Dennett's words "an imaginary center of narrative gravity" (which would imply to doubt their own existence).

An equation that can't be solved

"For twenty years I have mistrusted consciousness. It is the name of a non-entity and has no right place among first principles.." William James, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 1 (1904) 477-491

Self-consciousness is something which becomes harder to understand the more you think about it. As a real mystery, we can believe that there is a solution, but we don't really understand it. We only get used to it when we grow older. Why do we have a constant feeling of staying the same person, although we are constantly changing, and the experiences from our former "selves" form us as a person in the first place ? How is it possible to be aware of "oneself" if there is no such thing as a mental "self", soul or spirit ?

The mind receives a myriad impressions each day, and one of these impressions is the idea of yourself - this idea is nothing compared to the vast flood of impressions, but it is everything to you. In a state of self-consciousness, everything seems to equal nothing, sense seems to equal nonsense, understanding seems to equal confusion,..

What is if self-consciousness is based on an equation that can not be solved, because it contains imagination and wishful illusions on one side and harsh reality on the other side ? An equation which is only true for 'imaginary' units ? Then we can not find an explanation because there is none.

A single personality disorder

If something defies all explanations, often a wrong expectation or ill posed problem is the reason. The "self" could be a social construct to ease socialization and a pleasant illusion to prevent us from becoming mad - the wrong expectation that the inner voice belong to a single speaker, just like a real voice belongs to a real person. The imaginary belief that a physical body is inhabited by a kind of mental body, soul or spirit.

Some persons suffer from Multiple personality disorder, or MPD. MPD is defined as a condition in which "two or more distinct identities or personality states" alternate in controlling the patient's consciousness and behavior. May the idea of a single self is a kind of disorder, too: a "single personality disorder".

A strange loop

Douglas Hofstadter argues in his book "I Am a Strange Loop" that the self is exactly what the book title says: a strange loop.

Can the material brain produce an immaterial consciousness by the incredibly complex interactions of 100 billion neurons? No. But a material brain can implement, realize and reproduce an immaterial idea. Certainly 100 billion neurons are capable of forming intricate patterns of feedback loops. Yet in real brains these loops are damped to prevent total chaos and over excitation. If it exists, then the intricate patterns of feedback loops is mainly a reverberation. Therefore these loops are only responsible for the strange, short-lived feelings associated with self-consciousness.

Self-conscious is both: the strange, confusing, and short-lived feeling associated with intricated patterns of feedback loops which arise if inconsistent items are related to each other: everything is related to nothing, real to unreal, inside to outside, material to immaterial, important to unimportant, etc. And it is the insight associated with the continuous identification of the self in the ever-changing environment. Self-consciousness is like a whirl in the steam of consciousness related to insight (I am this!) in confusion (who am I?) and belief (the self exist!) in doubt (how can it be possible?).

Evolution of self-consciousness

According to Julian Jaynes and his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", humans were not always conscious of themselves. He argues that people in ancient times heard voices which told them what to do: the own thoughts were experienced as coming from outside of them, from disembodied voices, spirits or gods. The argument is simple: having language but lacking full self-consciousness, prehistoric man's actions were often governed by voices, which are in many ways similar to certain forms of schizophrenia. If men and women in very ancient cultures were more or less directed by these godlike voices, then it is true that in (pre)-biblical times, gods interacted with people in a very different way than today.

In those times there were no concepts like individuality, personality, freedom, and human-rights as we know them today, and people were not socialized to become independent self-aware individuals. There was no newspaper and no TV, and books only started to appear. Today, people with schizophrenia who hear voices in their head are considered as ill, while people who identify their inner voice as themselves are considered as normal. In ancient times, it was maybe different: people who heart voices in their head were considered as normal, while people who identified their inner voice as themselves were the exception (the king and the prophets who proposed new laws and pretended to be like god).

Links

• Steven Pinker, The mystery of consciousness, Time Feb. 12 (2007)

• Scientific American, Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?

• Scientific American, How Does Consciousness Happen

• Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi, IEEE Spectrum, Can Machines Be Conscious?

Videos

Dr. V.S. Ramachandran about green consciousness, qualia, and self "The rrreason is very simple. I can rrreflect on my qualia.." Ramachandran Video on YouTube

David Chalmers about the "Science of Consciousness" David Chalmers Video on YouTube

Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds? Dan Dennett Video on YouTube

More Daniel Dennett videos about consciousness: lecture on consciousness in 6 parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6